Igor Rachkovsky

Igor Anatolyevich Rachkovsky (Russian: Игорь Анатольевич Рачковский; born 5 April 1968) is a Belarusian military officer and politician who was the chairman of the State Border Committee of the Republic of Belarus from 2007 to 2012 and later served as the President of the Belarusian Ice Hockey Association from 2014 to 2017. Igor Rachkovsky was born on 5 April 1968 in Smarhon, Grodno region of the Byelorussian SSR. In 1990, he graduated from the Riga Higher Military Political School in Latvia. He also graduated from the Belarusian Institute of National Security in 1996 and earned a law degree from the Belarus State Economic University in 2001. Rachkovsky began his service in the Strategic Rocket Forces before moving to military counterintelligence. He then joined the Border Guard Service of Belarus in 1998. He worked at the Separate Service of Active Measures of the Border Troops and became its head in 2004. On 10 April 2007, he was appointed Chairman of the State Border Committee. Euroradio linked this appointment to the fact that the President's older son, Viktor Lukashenko, had served under Rachkovsky's command. In that year, he was granted the rank of major general, becoming the youngest general in the history of independent Belarus at the age of 39.