Eliches' photo is Brad Dourif that I've edited using FaceApp and Paint.net. I've basically given him a mustache and made his skin much more wrinkled and full of liver spots than Dourif is IRL.
The Belarusian constitution forbids the president from being a member of a political party while in office, so Eliches is technically an independent but is the unofficial leader of
Belaya Rus (like OTL, a party that essentially is just a party dedicated to being uncritically supportive of the president).
For his backstory, I grabbed his birthplace by finding a couple OTL top Belarusians (including Sidorsky) were from Gomel and then it went from there once I remembered that Gomel was one of the regions most affected by Chernobyl. My headcanon is that Eliches was an engineer in Gomel after his military service (conscription was mandatory in the USSR) and although he wasn't a
liquidator, he worked in heavily-contaminated areas that were later added to the
Polesie State Radiological Reserve. His attitude towards radiation were sadly not that unusual even among Chernobyl liquidators (thanks mainly to the Soviets lying about or downplaying the harmful effects of ionizing radiation to their citizens), and his wife's death last year is another hint that he's wrong/in denial about it.
He became involved in politics after the fall of the USSR and served briefly in the legislature (the Supreme Soviet was Belarus' legislature until the adoption of a new constitution in 1996) after winning a seat in the first post-Soviet elections, but declined to continue after seeing Lukashenko's dictatorial turn.
He joined the opposition to Lukashenko and became a key figure in the post-Lukashenko era and being named president due to not being associated in any way with the regime. But gradually he begun to emulate his predecessor more and more as his presidency wore on. He retained the Soviet-era symbols Lukashenko had put in place and remained in the
Union State with Russia (notice all the "Chair of the Council of Ministers" are all TTL's Russian PMs since Eliches took office) and, as the article mentioned, is now more than willing to ditch his democratic principles to remain in power (a sad reflection on several OTL rulers who came to power promising democracy, but who ruled as autocrats).
Also, this has absolutely nothing to do with Dourif's role as Gríma Wormtongue in the
Lord of the Rings trilogy and how his character helps turn King Théoden from a strong and vibrant king into a decrepit puppet of the villain Saruman. Do not read anything into it.
/s
