Moscow, (EFE).- The President of Belarus, Alexandr Lukashenko, reappeared this Monday in public for the first time since last May 9, after alarms about his state of health inside and outside the country were triggered.
The head of state “is currently at the central command post of the Air Force and the Air Defense Forces,” the Belarusian Presidency’s press service said on its Telegram channel, in which it published a photograph of Lukashenko. in uniform and bandaged left hand.
The official agency BELTA reported that the 68-year-old president was interested in the organization and implementation of the protection of the country’s airspace, after on Saturday in the nearby Russian region of Briansk “four planes were shot down” of Russia.
“We were forced to respond to this. Since then, we have been on high alert,” Lukashenko stressed.
Absence in public acts
The absence of the Belarusian president in public events since May 9, the Day of the Soviet Victory over Nazi Germany, triggered alarms about his state of health, even more so after a Russian deputy stated the day before that the president “got sick” .
The head of state of Belarus was together with six other leaders from Central Asia and Armenia last Tuesday in Moscow to accompany Russian President Vladimir Putin on Red Square in the traditional Victory Day military parade.
However, he did not attend the lunch that the head of the Kremlin offered his counterparts and was the only leader who traveled to the tomb of the Unknown Soldier by electric car, despite the monument being just 300 meters away on foot.
The president left immediately after this act in which the leaders laid flowers on the grave and in the afternoon in Minsk he participated in an act to commemorate Victory Day in the Belarusian capital, but did not deliver any speech.
Rumors about his health
On Saturday afternoon Euroradio listeners reported an official motorcade at the medical center in Zhdanovichi, on the outskirts of Minsk.
According to this medium, the hospital entrances were blocked and security forces were deployed on the roads leading to the clinic.
Rumors about the state of Lukashenko’s health intensified on Sunday, the Day of the Flag, the Coat of Arms and the Anthem of Belarus, when the president did not appear to commemorate it.
That same day, the first deputy head of the Committee on Affairs of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) of the Russian Duma (Lower House), Konstantin Zatulin, stated that Lukashenko “just fell ill”, but like anyone else does.
“He probably needs to rest, that’s all,” he said in an interview with Russia’s Podiom newspaper.
As one of the Belarusian opposition leaders in exile, former Minister of Culture Pavel Latushko, assured on his YouTube channel on Sunday, Lukashenko has “infectious allergic myocarditis”.