Longtime Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko won a “sham” presidential election on Sunday with 87.6 percent of vote, according to an official exit poll, marking his seventh term as leader of the Eastern European country.
Four opposition candidates appeared on the ballot — but all were loyal to Lukashenko, who has led Belarus for more than 30 years.
“There is no alternative to Alexander Lukashenko as the leader of our country,” one of the theoretical candidates, Communist Party leader Sergei Syrankov, told the BBC ahead of the vote. “So, we are taking part in the election with the president’s team.”
Neither the EU, the U.K. nor the U.S. recognize Lukashenko’s government as legitimate. Fraudulent presidential elections in 2020 ignited mass protests that almost led to Lukashenko’s downfall prior to a brutal crackdown to suppress protesters and opponents, backed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Lukashenko has clung to power for 30 years. Tomorrow, he’ll reappoint himself in yet another sham election,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on the eve of the vote on X. “This is a blatant affront to democracy. Lukashenko doesn’t have any legitimacy.”
Inside Belarus, public reaction to the results was muted, a far cry from 2020, when many thousands took to the streets in protest of Lukashenko’s rule.
Art Balenok, a Belarus activist living in Austria, attributed that to the repression so many faced in the aftermath of the 2020 unrest.
“This whole thing [resistance to Lukashenko] has been pushed down, repressed so badly, that doing something from within the country at the moment is not possible,” he told POLITICO in an interview after the exit poll results were announced.
More than half a million people have fled the country since Lukashenko’s last rigged election victory.
“If you go out and start protesting, you’ll be thrown in jail,” Balenok said. “Maybe you’ll come out one day. Maybe not.”
Exiled Belarus opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya protested the election from the Polish capital Warsaw on Sunday. “Today, we marched for freedom in Warsaw — united and unshaken, honoring our heroes who gave their lives for freedom,” she posted on X, alongside photos from the demonstrations.
“Together, we are unstoppable,” she said. “As Belarusians, we will never lose hope. We will reclaim our country and return home stronger than ever.”
In an interview with POLITICO last week, Tsikhanouskaya urged world leaders to “be prepared for the next moment of opportunity,” and to have a “strategy” to take advantage of the next potential tipping point when Lukashenko’s dictatorship could fall.
“There will be only two alternatives for Belarus: Either somebody very pro-Russia like Lukashenko’s followers or it will be democratic forces,” she said.
As he cast his vote on Sunday, Lukashenko told reporters that some of his political opponents had “chosen” to go to prison or into exile. While no one was prevented from speaking out in Belarus, prison was “for people who opened their mouths too wide, to put it bluntly, those who broke the law,” he was reported as saying by Reuters.
Lukashenko has freed more than 250 people in the past year, but denied it was an attempt to repair relations with the West.
“I don’t give a damn about the West,” he said, adding that Belarus was willing to talk to the EU but not to “bow before you or crawl on our knees.”
The European Parliament also denounced the Belarus election as a “sham.” A resolution adopted last week called on the EU to refuse to recognize Lukashenko’s anticipated victory.
Gregory Svirnovskiy contributed to this article.
Lukashenko wins ‘sham’ election in Belarus with 87.6 percent of vote
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