Lukashenka took his son Kolya with a sabre along for negotiations with Yushchenko (Photo)
- 10.11.2009, 11:06
As Gazeta.ua writes, the heads of Ukraine and Belarus visited the Carpathian region on November 6. Alyaksandr Lukashenka brought humanitarian aid: masks and anti-virus medicines. He took his 5-year son Mikalai along.
Security service officers were driving around the airport of Ivano-Frankovsk every 15 minutes patrolling the territory in the morning. An aircraft with Yushchenko was the first to land.
“How are you? How’s your health? Everybody’s alive?” the president of Ukraine asked journalists. He sat down to the table not waiting for answers. Governor Nikolai Paliychuk, 37 years old and head Ivano-Frankovsk Viktor Anushkevichus, 46 years old, took seats near him.
“It seems the epidemic peak has been overcome in Western Ukraine. We must forget this panic,” Yushchenko said. Alyaksandr Lukashenka entered the hall ten minutes later holding his son by his hand. Nikolai, little bit shy, sat down near his father opposite the Belarusian table flag and began to unscrew it from the base.
“We have arrived to show that we are together,” Yushchenko said. “I am thankful to Alyaksandr Lukashenka who showed by his visit to Ivano-Frankovsk that we shouldn’t panic.”
“Dad, when will we go?” the son asked Lukashenka in a loud voice and pulled his sleeve. Alyaksandr Lukashenka smiled and whispered something to Kolya helping him to fix the flag. The boy calmed down.
“This is not plague, not a dangerous contagion. It can be treated. Panic is the most terrible disease,” Lukashenka said. “I am happy you have invited me to West, because I used to visit it when I was young.”
Some minutes after the briefing Lukashenka junior was accompanied to the aircraft ladder. Mikalai wore a knitted cap, black jacket, and blue trousers. He also had a toy sabre. The boy ran to the aircraft, but was caught by a man in a long black coat. He led the child to the cabin by the hand.
Alyaksandr Lukashenka joined him thirty minutes later. Yushchenko presented him a Ukrainian traditional shirt ad give him a kiss.
As Ukrainian media remind, 65 cases of swine flu were detected in Ukraine in November 9.
The note of www.charter97.org: We remind that it wasn’t the first time when Alyaksandr Lukashenka had taken his five-year old son along to foreign trips. Kolya has already been present at high-level negations – he visited his father’s meeting with Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan.