On May 11 Alexander Lukashenko fired the Interior Minister Lieutenant-General Anatoly Kuleshov. His post the head of state has entrusted to Colonel Igor Shunevich, who had worked as the first-deputy minister.
The Internet daily "Belarusian Partisan" refers Shunevich as the protege of the eldest son Victor Lukashenko.
"The talks that the days of Anatoly Kuleshov at the Interior Ministry were numbered have been for a long time. It was said also, the ex-minister is seriously ill - he has inoperable stage in oncology", the web site writes.
And this kind of characterization Shunevich after his transfer from the KGB in the Interior Ministry in January 2012 was given by the retired KGB colonel Valery Kostka:
"I made inquiries: Shunevich, who was appointed as the first deputy interior minister instead Pekarski, was also a good professional, when he headed the KGB investigation department of the Minsk region. He was a professional and a good head of department. As soon as he got into the political system, in the "cage" - immediately began to carry out a political order. Political order for Baikova, for "hunters". Therefore, I am convinced, the same "perspective" awaits Shunevich as Poludzen and Pekarsky" (now former Deputy Interior Minister Yevgeny Poluden is in the KGB detention center, and Oleg Pekarsky dismissed with the phrase "in connection with the commission of offenses, discrediting the title of the Internal Affairs officer" - UDF.BY).
Editor of the opposition website charter97.org Natalia Radzina is also familiar with the new Minister of Internal Affairs of Belarus. According to the journalist, Shunevich was one of those, who interrogated her in the KGB detention center.
- Prior to his appointment to the new position Igor Shunevich was еру head of the KGB department on struggle against corruption and organized crimes. But about this I learned only today, when I saw the photograph of a man so quickly replaced Oleg Pekarsky.
Igor Shunevich I saw for the first time in mid-January in the KGB prison. I called for questioning after lights out at 22:00. Formally, this was not an interrogation, but "conversation" as it was held without a lawyer. There were a lot "conversations" in the KGB prison, as opposed to actual interrogation with lawyers. Lawyers in the KGB prison were not allowed, and so we were pressed at such "gatherings".
Shunevich at the very beginning said he wouldn't say from which Ministry he was, and he urged not to tell anyone about our "conversation." Frankly, I was sure that he is from the Office of Counterintelligence. He conducted the interrogation not in a special room in the detention center, but in the office of warden, after expelling him from there.
What the Chief Directorate for Combating Corruption and Organized Crime of the KGB was interested of? In the beginning, I exhausted by two days of these "conversations" with the operative and the chief of prison and by one interrogation with an investigator, once said: "There is no need to recruit me and to require testimony against Andrei Sannikov and Dmitry Bondarenko". Shunevich at once said that "he really is not going to recruit me". And anyway, he said, the work of charter97.org site is the interest of KGB, and he is interested in "a far more serious things".
According to Radzina, "Shunevich also appeared during the trial of the Press Secretary of Andrei Sannikov Alyaksandr Atroshchankau, when he was sentenced to four years in prison. Shunevich was surrounded by skin headed people in civilian clothes".
