Zakharchenko was a close aide to Lukashenko in the early 1990s, when the future president headed a parliamentary anti-corruption committee, it said.
The decree appointed Colonel Viktor Sheiman, secretary of Belarus' Security Council, to the post. Sheiman, a career military officer and an Afghan war veteran, is reportedly a Lukashenko confidant and is rumored to be extremely influential in Belarussian politics since Lukashenko's election in July 1994.
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