[source: here]

Like most dictators, Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko enjoys grand, albeit pointless, displays of bravado that don’t accomplish anything, but are designed to inform the world, and the people, that he is, indeed, powerful.

Think of Vladimir Putin topless on a bear, or Kim Jong Un’s weapons tests.

Worse still was his response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but let’s focus on the most recent news coming out of Belarus.

Lukashenko recently made a dramatic show of defiance against protests demanding his resignation by toting a rifle and wearing a bulletproof vest as he strode away from a helicopter that landed at his residence, while demonstrators massed at the perimeter of the property.

He also declared, per The Daily Beast, that the protesters “would have to kill him before a fresh presidential election would be granted”.

He should watch out – one of them might take him up on that. It wouldn’t be the first revolution to end that way.

Also in the helicopter, dressed in full military gear, was his son, Nikolai Lukashenko, the heir to the dictatorship, who has come of age amidst the protests.

The 15-year-old is ready to take the throne from his father, having been groomed to do so from a young age.

According to a Belarusian political insider, “the appearance of Lukashenko with his son [leaving the helicopter] was supposed to demonstrate that they are not cowards and will fight till the very end”.

Here’s what they chatted about:

“So, where are they?”  [Nikolai, also called Kolya] asked of the protesters below. Lukashenko responded: “They learned you’d be here, so they’ve escaped like rats.”

It was Kolya’s most prominent appearance during the weeks of protest. The conversation between father and son summed up the family’s attitude to their subjects.

“This child grew up without his mother. He was spoiled, allowed anything he wanted,” Pavel Marinich, an exiled opposition leader, told The Daily Beast.

“This boy has heard that the Belarusian nation is ‘little people;’ that women cannot be presidents; that the real role of women is ‘to decorate the world.’ He also heard his father say: ‘People do not become presidents, they are born to be presidents.’”

You can see why some are calling the small dictator-to-be the “Prince Joffrey of Belarus”.

Skip ahead to the 1:37 mark and observe:

Why we have to watch the entire helicopter ride is beyond me.

Anyway, let’s return to Nikolai.

From the age of five, he has met with some of the world’s most famous leaders, from the Obamas and two successive popes to Hugo Chavez and Putin.

When he was seven, Dmitry Medvedev, who was Russia’s president at the time, gave him a handgun made of gold, which is a perfectly normal gift for a child.

Nothing to see here.

Lukashenko has two other sons, but they don’t appear often in public, so he clearly doesn’t plan on handing the throne over to them.

The daddy issues there must be something to behold.

Kolya “might become the president in some 20 years,” Lukashenko once said. Since Kolya was a toddler, his father has jailed his opponents and potential presidential rivals.

This year, Lukashenko’s KGB and police have demonstrated outrageous violence towards protesters, with Human Rights Watch reporting that more than 7 000 people were detained in just four days.

“All of them suffered abuse, male detainees were beaten, in most cases both by detaining officers and at the detention center,” said Tanya Lokshina, associate director for Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia division.

The harm done to a child who grows up in this environment is hard to imagine.

If he makes it out without sociopathic tendencies, I would be surprised.

Whether or not the boy-king is ready for the throne, hundreds of thousands of Belarusian protesters are determined to ensure that the country’s next leader will be elected, not born into power.

[source:dailybeast]