Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has won a seventh term in office after winning a Jan. 26 election that critics, including Germany’s foreign minister, claim was unfair.
“You can congratulate the Republic of Belarus; we have elected a president,” Igor Karpenko, head of the country’s official election commission, told reporters after votes had been counted.
According to preliminary results, Lukashenko, who first came to power in 1994, won almost 87 percent of all ballots cast.
Roughly 85 percent of the country’s almost 7 million eligible voters took part in the poll, electoral officials said.
Lukashenko, 70, ran against four other candidates, none of whom had been seen as posing a serious challenge to the incumbent president.
However, some critics have questioned the legitimacy of the poll, saying independent media are banned in Belarus while opposition figures have been jailed or forced into exile.
On the day of the election, demonstrations against Lukashenko were reported in Warsaw, which is Poland’s capital, and other East European cities.
“It is a bitter day for all those who long for freedom and democracy.”
Lukashenko, when asked by reporters about the Western criticism, said his opponents had chosen their own fate.
“Some chose prison, some chose ‘exile,’ as you say,” he said on Jan. 26. “We didn’t kick anyone out of the country.”
Opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who left Belarus after contesting a 2020 presidential election, said Lukashenko had engineered his reelection as part of a “ritual for dictators.”
After Lukashenko won reelection in 2020, the United States and the European Union refused to acknowledge him as the country’s legitimate leader, claiming he had used his security forces to disperse opposition protests.
Western capitals also backed Tsikhanouskaya’s claim that the 2020 poll had been rigged in Lukashenko’s favor, preventing her rightful victory.
The Epoch Times could not independently verify the assertion.
On Jan. 26, newly confirmed U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Belarus had “unilaterally released” a U.S. citizen whom he identified as Anastassia Nuhfer.
Rubio provided no further details about the case, which has yet to be made public.
‘No. 1 Ally’
Belarus, a former Soviet republic, has long been a staunch supporter of Moscow, with the Kremlin previously describing the country as Russia’s “No. 1 ally.”“The convincing election win clearly indicates your high political authority, as well as undisputed [public] support ... for the policy course being pursued by Belarus,” Putin said in a congratulatory message cited by Russia’s state-run TASS news agency.
The Russian leader stressed the close ties between Moscow and Minsk, saying the two would continue working together in the context of the “Union State” treaty.
In effect since 1999, the Union State is aimed at cementing economic and defense ties between the two neighbors, which share a 770-mile border.
Within the framework of the Union State, Russia and Belarus share a security structure that includes a joint “Regional Group of Forces” and a jointly run air-defense system.
In 2023, Belarus made international headlines after Moscow unveiled plans to station nuclear weapons at Belarusian military facilities.
Belarusian officials, including Lukashenko himself, have since confirmed that an unspecified number of Russian nuclear warheads are currently stationed on Belarusian territory.
Along with the bilateral Union State treaty, Belarus is a longstanding member of several Moscow-led regional groupings. These include the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the Eurasian Economic Union, and the Commonwealth of Independent States.
