Lukashenko awards himself largest-ever victory in sham Belarus elections

Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko secured a seventh consecutive term in office on Sunday after winning yet another landslide victory in the country’s presidential elections, the country’s Central Election Commission announced in the early hours of Monday morning.

While the EU and US both dismissed the results as “neither free nor fair”, Lukashenko told reporters at a polling station in the Belarusian capital Minsk on Sunday that he “didn’t give a damn” what the West thought about the election.

According to an official exit poll published by the commission, Lukashenko won 86.82% of the vote with a turnout of 85.7%, his highest vote share in a presidential election since he first took office over 30 years ago.

Four other government-approved candidates — Aleh Haidukevich, Siarhei Syrankou, Hanna Konapatskaya, and Alyaksandr Khizhnyak — were also on the ballot, but none of them offered any criticism of Lukashenko during the campaign and their joint total share of the vote was just under 9%.

Just 3.6% of voters cast their votes “against all” the candidates, the Central Election Commission said, despite being urged to do so by exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Monday congratulated Lukashenko on his “convincing victory”, which he said demonstrated the Belarusian dictator’s “high political authority” and the “undeniable support” the people of Belarus had for him.

Lukashenko, who in recent months has attempted to reclaim the term “dictator”, has promised that under his leadership, Belarus would remain “a dictatorship of order, justice, kindness and respect”, and claimed that members of the country’s opposition who had been imprisoned or left Belarus had “chosen” prison or exile and that the Belarusian government “never forced anyone out of the country”.

Belarusians living abroad — many of whom left the country amid a wave of repressions against those who participated in mass protests against the fraudulent results of the country’s last election in 2020 — were not permitted to vote at the country’s embassies and consulates abroad.

Protests by pro-democracy Belarusian nationals were held on Sunday in Warsaw, Vilnius, Berlin and Kyiv, with Tsikhanouskaya thanking those who took part for sending a “powerful reminder that Belarusians will never stop fighting for freedom, democracy & a European future”.