![Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk (left to right) , Belarusian Supreme Soviet Chairman Stanislau Shushkevich, and Russian President Boris Yeltsin stand for applause on December 8,1991, after signing a mutual assistance agreement stating that "the Soviet Union as a geopolitical reality [and] a subject of international law has ceased to exist."](https://gdb.rferl.org/f1298b4a-d480-4c63-bb25-09d127102bd5_w250_r1_s.jpg)
MINSK -- Stanislau Shushkevich, the first leader of independent Belarus, has been placed in intensive care in a hospital over complications from COVID-19.
Shushkevich’s wife, Iryna, told RFE/RL on April 26 that the 87-year-old former chairman of the Belarusian Supreme Council began treatment last month after testing positive for the omicron variant of the coronavirus and had minimized all possible contacts since.
Shushkevich, along with then Russian and Ukrainian leaders Boris Yeltsin and Leonid Kravchuk, signed the Belavezha accords in Belarus on the dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 8, 1991.
