Alyaksandr Ryhoravich Valfovich is State Secretary of the Security Council. Since 2020, he has steadily strengthened his position within Belarus’s power hierarchy, and in recent months this process has accelerated. Last week, the combat-readiness inspection of the Interior Ministry’s Internal Troops, assessed the actions of mobilised personnel and units under near crisis conditions, and on the evening of 8 September personally reported the results of the inspection to Alyaksandr Lukashenka. Personnel issues in the Armed Forces were discussed during the same report.
These activities go beyond routine exercises. Throughout 2026, the State Secretariat of the Security Council has consistently expanded the practice of snap inspections: from individual Armed Forces units to assessments of entire branches of troops, command structures and mobilisation deployment, and now to the Interior Ministry’s armed formations. Valfovich is becoming a key operator in this system of presidential control: he does not directly command the security agencies, but receives Lukashenka’s instructions, organises checks on their implementation, consolidates the results and reports them back to the president in the form of conclusions, including on personnel matters.
Biography and Career
He was born on 28 June 1967 in Kazan, Tatar ASSR, Russian SFSR. Valfovich is a fourth-generation military officer. His grandfather, Alyaksandr Ryhoravich, fought in the Second World War. His father, Ryhor Alyaksandravich Valfovich, was a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Army and a tank officer.
As a child, he moved with his family to the Belarusian SSR because of his father’s posting. He grew up in the country’s main military settlement, Piečy near Barysaŭ, where he graduated from Secondary School No. 7 in 1984. Alyaksandr Valfovich subsequently graduated from three key military educational institutions that firmly linked him to the Russian and Soviet military elite: the Moscow Higher Combined Arms Command School in 1988; the Military Academy of the Republic of Belarus, Command and Staff Faculty, in 1998; and the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in 2008.
He began his service in the motor-rifle troops and rose from platoon commander to Chief of the General Staff. He served in junior officer posts — platoon commander, company commander and deputy battalion commander — first in the Soviet Army and later in the armed forces of independent Belarus.
On 26 January 2021, Alyaksandr Lukashenka appointed Valfovich State Secretary of the Security Council of the Republic of Belarus. He replaced Valery Vakulchyk in the post. On 4 March 2021, he was promoted to the senior military rank of lieutenant general.
Current role (2026): coordinates the activities of the entire security bloc — the Interior Ministry, KGB, Investigative Committee, State Border Committee and Defence Ministry. He has become the principal figure in “trench management”, overseeing the transfer of state bodies to wartime operation, the deployment of territorial defence and the formation of the joint Belarus-Russia Regional Grouping of Forces.
Because of the harsh suppression of the 2020 protests and subsequent facilitation of Russian military infrastructure, Valfovich is subject to extensive personal sanctions imposed by almost the entire Western world: the United States, European Union, United Kingdom, Canada, Switzerland, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Ukraine.
The general keeps his private life out of the public eye and adheres to strict patriarchal and closed norms. His wife is entirely non-public, providing the general with a traditional “secure rear”. His son, Maksim Alyaksandravich Valfovich, followed directly in his father’s footsteps by choosing a military career: he serves as an officer and commands a mechanised battalion. His brother, Dzmitry Ryhoravich Valfovich, is also a professional military officer and colonel.
Service Profile
Valfovich is a typical representative of the “young hawks” in the upper ranks of Belarus’s ruling establishment. He demonstrates loyalty both to the regime as a whole and to Lukashenka personally. He began his career under the patronage of Siarhei Huruliou, then Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces and First Deputy Defence Minister of Belarus. He maintains close friendly relations with his long-standing colleague Major General P. Muraveika. Unlike Muraveika, Valfovich is more a politician than a military strategist capable of planning and organising a large-scale operation. To compensate for this weakness, Valfovich brought Muraveika into the State Secretariat as his deputy in 2022–2024. In May 2024, Muraveika was appointed Chief of the General Staff and First Deputy Defence Minister of the Republic of Belarus. Valfovich’s current first deputy is Alyaksandr Nieviaŭski, who deserves particular attention and whom we will examine in future issues.
Valfovich has strong professional and personal ties with the Russian general staff and senior military establishment.
He supports a “Russian” path of development for Belarus. Accordingly, based on his personal convictions, he rejects negotiations with the West. At the same time, under certain conditions he is capable of reaching agreements if he is confident in guarantees of his personal security and the preservation of his position.
He is capable of, and apparently wishes to, lead a coalition of security officials in the event of Lukashenka’s death or resignation, although he does not possess sufficient qualities normally associated with a leader.
He is disciplined and conscientious. Colleagues and subordinates describe him as a decent person. He is straightforward in communication, dislikes public events and speeches, and lacks pronounced leadership qualities.
A Figure for the Transition
The strengthening of Alyaksandr Valfovich — especially visible recently, to the point that in summer 2026 he delivered an official Independence Day address in Lukashenka’s place, while the president recently openly announced stronger oversight by the Security Council State Secretariat over all security agencies, including the KGB — is one of the clearest signs of the regime’s transformation.
His growing influence is a response to three fundamental challenges facing the system amid the ageing of its leader and prolonged military instability in the region.
Lukashenka’s Task: A Counterbalance to a “Generals’ Plot” and the KGB
In any closed system, the security services — in this case the KGB headed by Ivan Tertel — tend to accumulate too much compromising material and real power. This always frightens a ruler with a paranoid disposition. Valfovich is an army general and former Chief of the General Staff. In the Soviet and post-Soviet tradition, military officers are mentally far removed from the intrigues of the security services: they think in terms of orders, regulations and troop movements. By placing the KGB under Security Council coordination — something Lukashenka stated directly in July 2026 when he said, “We will somewhat reformat the State Security Committee in terms of strengthening the State Secretariat” — the ruler is creating a counterweight. Valfovich acts as an “overseer of the chief guards”. The KGB continues to retain exclusive control over its agent network, but the broader personnel and organisational levers are now tied to the Security Council.
It should also be recalled that the Security Council is the key body in the event that the president is unable to perform his duties under Decree No. 2 “On the Protection of Sovereignty and the Constitutional Order”, signed by Lukashenka on 9 May 2021. In June 2021, following the decree, a special presidential decree approved new Regulations on the Security Council. This legally incorporated the provisions of Decree No. 2 into the regulations governing the body itself, expanded the functions of the Security Council State Secretariat and clarified its composition — which security officials and state officials have voting rights under such “collective rule”. In March 2024, this line was further developed by a decree improving the procedure for moving the state apparatus from peacetime to wartime operation.
Even Directive No. 1, updated in September 2026 and previously concerned largely with workplace safety, has, with Valfovich’s involvement, effectively become a document on comprehensive mobilisation discipline in society.
On 11 September 2026, Lukashenka announced that his son Mikalai had been called up for military service and was serving in “the most difficult unit”, although the exact location is classified. Formally, the call-up was handled by Defence Minister Viktar Khrenin, but in practical terms Alyaksandr Valfovich bears responsibility within the military and Security Council system for Mikalai’s security.
Moscow’s Task: A Familiar, “Own” Military Figure for a Possible Transition
For the Kremlin, Valfovich is an entirely familiar, “own” figure. In circumstances where a transfer of power in Belarus could begin at any moment, or where Lukashenka’s governing capacity may continue to decline, Moscow needs a hard-line, systemic security official controlling the perimeter. Valfovich does not play at “multi-vector” policy. He is closely synchronised with Sergei Shoigu on Union State information-security issues and with the Russian Defence Ministry. For Moscow, Valfovich’s strengthening is a guarantee that the Belarusian army and Internal Troops will remain within a single allied framework at a critical moment of power transfer and will not allow any unexpected developments from society.
The System’s Task: “We Are with You”, but “We Can Do It Ourselves”
Putting the country on a wartime footing amounts to “trench management”. Belarus is now effectively living in a state of permanent military preparation: combat-readiness inspections of the Internal Troops, territorial defence, drones at the borders, and the diversion of neighbouring countries’ armed forces to border threats associated with migrants.
Valfovich performs effectively as the director of this “fortress”. He regularly inspects exercises involving the suppression of mass unrest, the elimination of saboteurs and the protection of factories from seizure.
For the Kremlin, these preparations send an exceptionally hard signal: “We are with you.” Belarusian elites are integrating databases, synchronising regulations and sharing defence budgets.
But the domestic meaning of all these frantic reshuffles and exercises inside Belarus is a desperate signal from the system itself: “We can do it ourselves.” The security apparatus is trying to prove to the ageing ruler that it is loyal, and to Moscow that it fully controls the situation in its area of responsibility and does not need to be replaced by direct Russian management.
We are pleased to share this selected analysis from BIT, a weekly analytical monitoring and early-warning bulletin on developments in Belarus, with the permission of the editorial team. The article above was originally published in BIT's Person of the Week section, which provides in-depth profiles of individuals shaping Belarus's political, economic, and security landscape.
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