Lukashenko’s hidden circle: The people behind the power
Aleksandr Lukashenko has been ruling Belarus for 30 years and plans to be “re-elected" for a seventh term in 2025. But what do voters really know about the "national leader", apart from what is broadcast by the press service and propaganda?
This is reported by Buro media.
How is his daily life organised? Who are the people that help the "people’s leader" with his routine? What does he eat, and who prepares his meals? These questions have remained unanswered for three decades.
We have discovered a whole group of people that surround him – personal chefs, a waitress, a doctor, and a hairstylist. They have served Aleksandr Lukashenko for years but have remained in the shadows. We will reveal new names and uncover their secrets. This story will include an internship with “Putin’s chef”, an extraordinary career rise, and possibly new family connections for Lukashenko himself.
APPRENTICE OF “PUTIN’S CHEF”
In 2015, a report aired on the NTV channel about the Minsk negotiations between the leaders of Germany, France, Ukraine, and Russia concerning the situation in Donbas. The story featured Lukashenko’s personal chef, Mikhail. French President François Hollande enjoyed Belarusian draniki with sour cream, while German Chancellor Angela Merkel preferred the bacon.
According to our findings, it was chef Mikhail Anishchanka who prepared food for the distinguished guests and Lukashenko himself.
Former chef of Lukashenko – Mikhail Anishchanka. Source: Instagram account of Mikhail Anishchanka
According to information we received from the CyberPartisans, Mikhail began his career at the RUP Oktyabrsky, part of Lukashenko’s Property Management Department, when he was just 19 years old in 2007.
According to the data from the Belarusian Social Protection Fund, Anishchanka was employed at Oktyabrsky during the meeting of the “Normandy Four” heads of state. At that time, the chef earned between $1,200 and $3,000 per month working for Lukashenko, which is equivalent to two to five average Belarusian salaries.
We spoke with someone who has access to Lukashenko’s kitchen. This person shared details about Mikhail Anishchanka’s career as the President’s chef and some of the nuances of working in "high-end" kitchens.
According to our source, Anishchanka interned at the restaurant Zastolie (part of RUP Oktyabrsky) while studying at a culinary college. He returned there after finishing his studies. His primary culinary mentor was Aliaksandr Petryman, an admirer of French cuisine and, at that time, the head chef of the restaurant Zolotoy Grebeshok. Mikhail collaborated with Zolotoy Grebeshok while also working in Lukashenko’s Property Management Department.
In addition to his apprenticeship with Yury Chyzh’s head chef, presidential chef Mikhail Anishchanka had several internships at Russian restaurants owned by former “Putin’s chef", the late Yevgeny Prigozhin. Anishchanka trained in St. Petersburg at Staraya Tamozhnia and Restoran Kuptsov Eliseevykh restaurants.
But let’s return to Lukashenko’s kitchen. According to our source, the cooks there most often prepare traditional Belarusian dishes, particularly potato-based ones such as draniki, babka, and machanka. The favourite soup is Belarusian zhur.
When asked how difficult it is for the staff to work with Lukashenko, the source responded:
“Nobody gets there [to serve Lukashenko] just like that. If you are worthy, if you show your professional qualities and skills, then you are allowed to take on responsible work".
From the data provided by CyberPartisans, we see that Anishchanka is no longer listed as an employee of Lukashenko’s Property Management Department. He worked for Lukashenko for 10 years before stepping into the public eye. Today, Mikhail hosts a cooking show on the state TV channel STV and organises culinary master classes. He also works as the head chef at the culinary studio Le Gourmet and the Royal Hall estate in the village of Chudzenichy near Minsk. The owner of the estate, businessman Dzmitry Markevich, considers Royal Hall to be a premium venue.
Today, Lukashenko’s former chef describes himself on Instagram as “the chef of your dreams".
THE LUNCH OF SILENCE
While Mikhail Anishchanka served the Belarusian elite at the Palace of Independence, during official trips, Lukashenko’s food preferences were catered to by chefs Zinaida Niakhai and Halina Ziamchonak aboard the government plane.
Chef Zinaida Niakhai worked from 2003 to 2010 at the state-run Arbat restaurant. In 2009, she married Heorhi Hlebka, an employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In 2010, when Arbat closed for renovation, Zinaida moved to work for RUP Oktyabrsky.
In 2013, she went on her first official trip with Lukashenko to Baku. From 2014 to 2020, she accompanied the politician almost on every trip involving meetings with heads of state. During her service as a “field” chef, Zinaida Niakhai earned between $1,100 and $3,000 per month. She retired in 2022.
We called Zinaida Niakhai. She told us that Lukashenko’s favourite dish is “a state secret”. However, she agreed to share a bit about her experience:
“Well, of course, [Lukashenko] is a good person. What else can I say? I can’t say anything bad. I retired, what can I do? Of course, if I were a little younger and healthier, I would have continued [working]. ‘Corona,’ of course, got me, and that’s all”.
In 2019, another cook from Oktyabrsky joined Lukashenko’s team. High trust was placed in chef of the Belarusian Chefs’ Guild, and Vitsebsk’s person of the year, Halina Ziamchonak. She made her way to culinary success by participating in numerous casting calls and competitions.
In 2011, Halina Ziamchonak participated in the selection of chefs for the 2014 World Ice Hockey Championship, where 50 chefs from the best restaurants in the capital were selected. Halina came eighth in this competition, impressing everyone with her unusual dishes, such as moose lip stuffed with forest delicacies, catfish sausages with mushrooms, and quails in egg whites. In 2012, she won an internship in Germany. In 2013, she received a third-degree diploma at the International Chef Competition “Golden Feast” in Moscow. In 2014, at the Republican Chef Competition “Golden Jacket", she took first place and won a gold medal in the category “Main Restaurant Meat Dish". In 2016, future chef for Lukashenko won a bronze medal at the World Culinary Olympics in Erfurt, Germany.
In September 2019, Halina Ziamchonak from Pastavy moved to Minsk and started working at Oktyabrsky. Within a month, she accompanied the Belarusian delegation, led by Lukashenko, to Nur-Sultan, and another month later, she flew with him to Vienna. At that time, Halina earned about $1,300 for her work with Lukashenko. By 2021, her salary at RUP Oktyabrsky reached $1,600. As of late 2023, Ziamchonak continued working at Oktyabrsky.
Halina Ziamchonak proudly shows off numerous awards and culinary masterpieces on her Odnoklassniki and Vkontakte pages. One of her proudest creations is bouquets made from bacon.
A bouquet made from bacon by Halina Ziamchonak. Source: Halina Zemchanok’s profile on Vkontakte
Halina Ziamchonak also takes pride in a dish of her own creation: “Belarusian sushi made from buckwheat and millet, with bacon, beef, and pickled cucumber”.
Among the unconventional presidential chef’s creations, we also found canapés with gooseberries, a cheese tractor, and bouquets made from pickled cucumbers and corn.
We decided to ask Halina Ziamchonak personally which dish is currently Lukashenko’s favourite, but she told us she “didn’t know” and hung up.
LUKASHENKO’S PERSONAL WAITRESS
Another member of Oktyabrsky who constantly accompanies Lukashenko on business trips is Natallia Aliaksandrava. After finishing school, she spent a year at the Minsk Employment Centre and then, in 2003, joined RUP Oktyabrsky as a waitress. She has been working at this organisation for over 20 years and has built a career. In 2007, she received a diplomatic passport, which allowed her to join Lukashenko’s trips at least 18 times. In 2022, Natallia was promoted to the position of sector manager. In 2019, she earned about $2,000 while working for Lukashenko, and in 2022, her salary reached $3,000. Today, she owns two apartments in Minsk.
“RUP Oktyabrsky in the property management department system is a monopoly that serves all state residences and all the country’s leadership. There is a narrow circle focused exclusively on him [Lukashenko]. This includes the kitchen staff, waiters and waitresses, and some other close service personnel. Not every employee of RUP Oktyabrsky will have walk-in privileges”, says a former employee of Lukashenko’s Administration.
Among those who work with Lukashenko, there is a certain hierarchy. The chefs and waiters serve Lukashenko, simply bringing him his breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, and they can expect stable and relatively high pay by Belarusian standards. However, there are people whose job duties bring them much closer to Lukashenko, and along with physical access to him, they receive much more than just a complete social package.
THE BEAUTY QUEENS OF LUKASHENKO
Resuscitationist Alena Kazak has been accompanying Lukashenko on trips since 2016. However, the official records give the impression that she does this on a volunteer basis. According to data from the Social Protection Fund, Kazak worked at the Republican Research and Practical Center “Cardiology” from 2014 to 2019, but in 2019, her average salary, from which she paid taxes, was only about 110 Belarusian rubles (around $52). From 2020 to 2021, it seemed as though she had earned nothing at all and, therefore, did not make any tax contributions. How is this possible? We were explained by an accountant and specialist from the Social Protection Fund:
“If the gross salary is zero, then, of course, there are no contributions to the Social Protection Fund. It’s an arrangement where ’I want to be listed there to have some benefits in Belarus for the sake of experience or pension purposes’. Especially if it’s a government organisation, it’s 100% for these purposes. Because if it’s a government structure with a higher pension, then continuity of service is required for the pension".
Alena Kazak came into the media spotlight in 2020. She was repeatedly seen with Lukashenko’s close associates, Natallia Eismant and Dzmitry Baskau.
Alena Kazak (second on the left) in the company of Lukashenko’s inner circle. Source: udf.name
In that turbulent time, they were going around courtyards cutting white-red-white ribbons. According to Belpol, Kazak’s phone was detected on “Square of Change” on the day of Raman Bandarenka’s killing.
In 2022, Kazak was employed at the 6th Clinical Hospital, where she received a monthly official salary of 500-600 Belarusian rubles (about 200 dollars). In late 2023, the Motolko.help project reported that Kazak had accompanied Lukashenko to the climate summit in Dubai.
As it became known to Buro journalists, by the end of 2023, resuscitationist Kazak ventured into business and took over as head of the beauty and wellness centre Iris. This centre is owned by the Montpart company, and prior to Kazak, it was led by Natallia Kizik, the sister of Lukashenko’s other personal doctor, Sviatlana Kanashenka.
In March 2024, Kazak was seen with Lukashenko during his visit to the charity festival "Alina-2024" in Minsk, organised by former gymnast Alina Kabayeva, who, according to Western media, has children with Vladimir Putin. In the autumn, Kazak, together with Eismant and Baskau, accompanied Maryia Vasileuskaya on her way to a space trip from Baikonur.
A Buro journalist tried to contact Alena Kazak to inquire about how she had been living for so long with such modest earnings. According to data from the Social Protection Fund, her salary was tiny, and the payment for accompanying Lukashenko on trips is not reflected in any documents. However, Kazak did not answer our calls.
PERKS FOR A HAIRCUT OR THE PRINCESS AND THE POTATO
For dessert, we decided to present the story of a woman who, thanks to her skills and closeness to Lukashenko, received dividends from the regime and paved the way for her whole family from Shklou to the capital.
Our colleagues from the Alliance of Investigators of Belarus have revealed that Sniazhana Motsnaya is none other than Lukashenko’s personal hairdresser and the “woman behind his famous hairstyle”.
Sniazhana Motsnaya. Source: shopogoliki.by
At that time, readers learned about the $250,000 apartment that the woman received for free from Lukashenko’s “moneybag”.
“One apartment was given to Lukashenko’s personal bodyguard, and another apartment went to a certain Sniazhana Motsnaya. People who were close to Lukashenko, speaking anonymously, told us that she was a young stylist, a hairdresser, a girl from Shklou, who was around him. But the main subject of our investigation was a more well-known character, Latyshonak, and we focused on him", our colleagues from the Alliance of Investigators of Belarus told us.
We decided to take a closer look at Sniazhana Motsnaya, studied her biography, and discovered some facts and coincidences that we would like to share with our readers.
Sniazhana Motsnaya and Lukashenko have known each other since 1991. On April 24, 1991, an article titled “Miss Pedagogy is Called Sniazhana” appeared in the district newspaper Udarny Front in Shklou.
The reporter tells the story of the winner of the first district show contest, the teacher of the Barsuki Special School:
“Well, Sniazhana herself (the future Miss), an eighteen-year-old girl, likes potatoes, her parrot Kesha, flowers, and old-fashioned romances, in which... there are men who could be knights. Probably, in the life of our Miss, she never met them".
In the local beauty contest, the author continues, Sniazhana Motsnaya won two prizes – first place and the audience’s favourite prize:
“...the ‘Belarus’ tape recorder, which Miss Sniazhana also won from the sponsors, was handed to her by the director of the state farm Gorodets, People’s Deputy of the BSSR, A.G. Lukashenko”.
But according to our sources who worked with Lukashenko, real luck smiled on Sniazhana in the mid-to-late 90s: Aleksandr Grigoryevich found himself in her hairdresser’s chair.
“She was brought to the Presidential Administration, that is, to at that time, the address was 38 Karl Marx Str, in a [service] car", people who worked with Lukashenko at the time told us.
“They brought her to Lukashenko so she could do his hair. Because, for example, if you look at his image from 1994 or 1996, it was quite a rustic type, and so they advised him to find someone to take care of his appearance”.
According to data provided by the CyberPartisans, Sniazhana was listed as a student at the Minsk State Linguistic University (MSLU) in 1994. Motsnaya herself states on her website that she graduated from the university in 1996. However, until 2001, there was no information about women’s professional activity.
Nevertheless, according to the passport database, in the spring of 1999, the recent graduate Sniazhana became pregnant and then acquired an apartment in a newly built improved-layout building on Mahilouskaya Street in the capital. In February 2000, Sniazhana gave birth to a daughter, Krystsina. Neither at that time nor later was Sniazhana Motsnaya officially married. She still uses her maiden name. In the “father” section, Krystsina’s mother listed Motsny Aleksandr Grigoryevich, but according to the CyberPartisans, no such person exists in Belarus.
We can assume that Sniazhana has registered her daughter under her family name, but we have not been able to find out who Aleksandr Grigoryevich is.
An aide who worked for Lukashenko in the late 1990s said that Sniazhana Motsnaya bore a daughter by her high-ranking compatriot. Another of our sources, who was very close to Lukashenko in the late 1990s, confirmed that Lukashenko had a daughter in 2000.
We also spoke to a few intelligence and law enforcement officers who are trained to “read faces” and asked them to take a look at the photos of Krystsina Motsnaya and Aleksandr Lukashenko.
“There are some indications that she is quite similar to the Lukashenko breed. Firstly, the forehead, eyebrows, eye distance and eye socket distance – they are quite far apart. Lukashenko himself has these characteristics – this is a family [resemblance]. Her face is similar. She also has a big mouth, and if you take a picture of Lukashenko without a moustache, this particular snippet – they are also quite similar”.
Buro is unable to confirm whether Aleksandr Lukashenko is the father of Sniazhana Motsnaya’s daughter. Only a DNA test can provide definitive proof.
But we called the mother. She said it was all “nonsense” and then ended the call. She stopped answering the phone when we tried to contact her again. So we called her from another number. After listening to our question, the woman hung up.
With the birth of her daughter, Sniazhana Motsnaya’s career began to take off. When the baby was 1.5 years old, according to the Social Security Fund database, the young mother got a job in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where she became the first secretary of the main European department.
“I took part in government delegations with the President and Prime Minister of Belarus and worked at the Embassy of Belarus in the Netherlands. Concurrently, I attended a training course for young CIS diplomats organised by the MIA of the Netherlands and the MIA of Egypt”, Sniazhana Motsnaya describes her career milestones on Instagram.
In 2002, Sniazhana Motsnaya’s mother, Lidziya, moved to Minsk from Shklou and, in 2003, was appointed a senior specialist at the State Control Committee. Meanwhile, Sniazhana went into business, first working at Belrosneft and then becoming a senior specialist at BelYugnefteprodukt. Sniazhana’s younger sister Larysa left work at Shklou RAIPO KOOPTORG and joined the family a few years later. The women worked together until 2009, when Larysa was transferred to Belarustorg, a company under Lukashenko’s Property Management Department.
But Sniazhana worked for a while in the Palace of the Republic and the Belarusian Hockey Federation, and then finally made her mark in business, working exclusively in the companies that Lukashenko “moneybags” control – Triple, Sokhra, Gas Venture, BSVT – Novye Tekhnologii.
As the Alliance of Investigators of Belarus previously reported, in 2016, the Unis Oil company, owned by the prominent Belarusian businessman Anatoly Ternavsky, who was then regarded as Lukashenko’s “moneybag”, provided Sniazhana Motsnaya with a 134-square-metre apartment valued at $250,000 – at no cost.
In 2016, Sniazhana decided to be an image maker in addition to business management.
“I am a diplomat, a hockey official and a business executive in the past. Today, I am a certified specialist in the field of image and style – stylist and image maker", Sniazhana writes in her blog.
According to CyberPartisans, in 2023 Motsnaya was an assistant manager at Bremino Group, owned by Aliaksei Aleksin, Nikolay Vorobey and Alexander Zaitsev, and worked part-time at Eliksir Molodosti Plus.
“It is a very personal story. When someone is transferred from one structure [of Lukashenko’s “moneybags”] to another like a passing banner, I think it is rather a form of payment for silence”, comments a former employee of Lukashenko’s Administration.
This is Sniazhana Motsnaya’s own description of her career path:
“I didn’t become a stylist by chance. My entire career has been linked to prominent personalities and influential people, political heavyweights and successful businessmen”.
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