Artist Alexander Rybak has a Belarusian background, and his father Igor was a defector from Belarus. Rybak now expresses concern about the situation in Ukraine and how it could affect his home country Belarus.
– I still have relatives in Belarus, but I am very happy that we got grandma over to Norway before this started, Rybak says to Dagbladet.
– Not a master in his own house
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Newspaper: Comes with threat of war
Strong reactions to image
It attracted attention the year Rybak won Eurovision in 2009, when he posed for a photo with Belarus’s dictator Alexander Lukashenko.
In the picture, Rybak stood smiling and with his thumb up to the caption:
– This is me with the president of my country of origin, he wrote.
It provoked strong reactions from several human rights organizations and opposition politicians from their home country of Belarus.
Fear the consequences
Rybak played in 2012 at the Belarusian concert festival “Slavianski Bazaar” in the city of Vitebsk. The festival was inaugurated by Lukashenko.
In the last week, Lukashenko has received a lot of attention for his support for Russia in their invasion of Ukraine. According to the newspaper The Kyiv Independent Lukashenko is ready to send Belarusian troops into Ukraine. Mr Lukashenko is also reported to have confirmed that Belarus has fired rockets into Ukraine.
Rybak does not want to comment further on the picture when Dagbladet makes contact, but points out that everyone in his family is against the invasion of Ukraine.
– I am afraid that Putin’s project will have bloody consequences, also in Belarus, Rybak says.
REACTIONS: This photo of Alexander Rybak together with Alexander Lukashenko attracted attention when Rybak uploaded it in 2009. Photo: Dagbladet’s photo archive
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