His wife announced that Stanislav Shushkevich, the first president of independent Belarus and considered one of the gravediggers of the Soviet Union (USSR), died at the age of 87.
“We hope that there will be a state funeral, but so far no one has contacted the family,” said the widow Irina Shushkevich.
According to various media outlets, the former president passed away in March after being seriously ill from the Covid-19 he contracted. His wife stated that at the end of April, her husband was in intensive care.
On December 8, 1991, the presidents of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine Boris Yeltsin, Stanislav Shushkevich and Leonid Kravchuk signed an agreement that organized the dissolution of the USSR and soon forced the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, to resign. Representing the death penalty of Soviet power.
But in 1994, Shushkevich was forced to resign by deputies accused of corruption, among other senior officials, in a report by the chairman of the parliamentary anti-corruption committee, Alexander Lukashenko.
A few months later, Lukashenko won the presidential election against Shushkevich and other candidates.
Nearly 30 years later, Lukashenko remains in power at the head of an authoritarian regime.
Stanislav Shushkevich led the opposition Social Democratic party until 2018. He claimed that in 2012, after a protest movement, the Belarusian regime banned him from leaving the country.
President Lukashenko has ordered a broad crackdown on the opposition, the press and independent NGOs in response to a broad protest movement against his re-election in 2020.
source: Noticias
