Former chairman of the Vitebsk Regional Executive Committee Aliaksandr Subbotin may receive an appointment to work abroad. This was hinted at by Aliaksandr Lukashenka while appointing Belarus’s ambassador to Russia Aliaksandr Ragozhnik as head of the Vitebsk region today.
“As for the current governor, well, he is a good person, everyone says so, and I absolutely do not object to this view. But perhaps the time has passed — after all, it has been a five-year term, in my opinion, right? The fifth year, and the pressure around was very serious. As Dziamitr Mikalayevich (Krutoi, head of Lukashenka’s administration – ed.) says, he burned out. Well, of course, I do not agree with such wording. But maybe he did burn out. Maybe he felt that this was probably not his. After all, being a leader is very, very difficult. You are all leaders, and you know and understand this. Therefore, speaking about Governor Subbotin, I want to say that this person is absolutely not lost for the country.
We plan, you will find out soon, to load him to the fullest. To load him from head to toe. If he has the character, he will cope. This concerns the external track of our country and other areas where serious work is needed.
Therefore, the governor of the Vitebsk region is a fairly good specialist, but we will try to use him in the direction in which, as I understand, he is well versed,” Lukashenka said.
Aliaksandr Subbotin headed the Vitebsk Regional Executive Committee in 2021–2026. Before that, in 2020–2021, he served as Deputy Prime Minister. Over the course of his career, Subbotin also twice worked as an aide to Lukashenka. On the “external track,” in 2018–2020, he was a member of the Board (minister) of the Eurasian Economic Commission for Industry and the Agro-Industrial Complex. Earlier, as Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Food and Director of the Department for Foreign Economic Activity, he dealt with disputes over supplies of Belarusian products to Russia.