Hardheaded Muraveika appointed Deputy Head of Presidential Administration, and General who didn't study in Russia to lead General Staff
Lukashenka appointed Pavel Muraveika as Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration. Previously, he held the position of Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces — First Deputy Minister of Defense. He was transferred to the new position two days after turning 55.
Major General Pavel Muraveika has a reputation for being hardheaded, even by the standards of the current security elite.
55-year-old Pavel Muraveika was born in Maryina Horka on September 26, 1971. In 1992, he graduated from the Minsk Higher Military-Political Combined Arms School. After that, Muraveika entered the Minsk Military Academy, graduating in 2001. A few years later, he studied in Russia — at the Academy of the General Staff of the Russian Federation. He graduated in 2008 with a gold medal.
Muraveika held the position of head of the first department of the Main Military Directorate of the General Staff. In 2013, he was put in charge of the Main Operative Directorate and given the rank of general.
In 2022, the general was transferred to the position of First Deputy State Secretary of the Security Council of Belarus.
Muraveika also has a Russian award. In 2019, Russian Ambassador Mikhail Babich presented him with the Order of Friendship.
Politician Pavel Latushka named Muraveika, along with General Alexander Volfovich, as the Russian lobby in the Belarusian security bloc.
Muraveika led the General Staff from 2024. There, he replaced Major General Viktor Gulevich, who, according to our information, opposed the participation of Belarusian military personnel in the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Muraveika, in turn, was replaced today at the General Staff by Major General Uladzimir Bely. Bely had only recently, since July 8, 2026, served as Deputy Minister of Defense. Prior to that, he headed the main department for combat training of the Armed Forces.
He was born on February 17, 1977, in the village of Mikalaeushchyna, Stowbtsy district. It turns out he is a countryman of Yakub Kolas.
He graduated with honors and a gold medal from the Command and Staff Faculty of the Military Academy. And later — from the Faculty of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Military Academy.
He rose from platoon commander in the 120th Guards Motorized Rifle Division to deputy battalion commander in the 120th Guards Separate Mechanized Brigade of the North-Western Operational Command. After that, he was chief of staff in the 19th Separate Mechanized Brigade and the 103rd Guards Separate Mobile Brigade, commanded the Guards Separate Airborne Brigade, and then became chief of staff — first deputy commander of the Special Operations Forces.
Later, Bely took the position of head of the General Staff Faculty of the Armed Forces — deputy head of the Military Academy of the Republic of Belarus.
He was commander of the Western Operational Command.
Unlike Muraveika, Uladzimir Bely did not study in Russia.
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