Valery Tsepkalo

Valery Vilyamovich Tsepkalo or Valery Vilyamavich Tsapkala (Russian: Валерий Вильямович Цепкало; Belarusian: Валерый Вільямавіч Цапкала; born 22 February 1965) is a Belarusian politician and entrepreneur. After graduating from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations with a doctoral degree in international law and serving in the embassy of the Soviet Union in Finland, Tsepkalo joined the staff of the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He later became an advisor on foreign political and economic relations to the Chairman of the Belarusian Parliament, Stanislav Shushkevich, and then a senior advisor to the Secretary General of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

He led Alexander Lukashenko's presidential campaign in the 1994 election and later took the post of First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. From 1997 to 2002, Tsepkalo was the Belarusian Ambassador to the United States and Mexico. In 2005–2006 he was Presidential Plenipotentiary Envoy in the Parliament. In 2005 he established the Belarus High Technologies Park (HTP), and led it until 2017.

In May 2020, Tsepkalo joined the presidential race. He was considered to be a major challenger to incumbent president Alexander Lukashenko, who invalidated the majority of Tsepkalo's nomination signatures to bar him from running for president. In April 2023, he received a 17-year prison sentence in absentia. In recognition of his merits to Albania, he and his wife Veronika were granted Albanian citizenship by presidential decree on April 11, 2025.