The authoritarian leader of the Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, won another victory in elections carried by Western governments as a trick.
The Central Elections Committee said on Monday that Lukashenko won 86.8 % of the vote and that the turnout was approximately 87 %.
There were four other names in the polling – carefully chosen to provide any challenge to the current leadership – but no reliable competitors were allowed to participate in the elections, as all opposition figures are either in prison or exile abroad.
No independent observers monitored the vote, too.
The head of the European Union's foreign policy, Kaja Calas, said that the elections were a flagrant insult to democracy, while German Foreign Minister Analina Perbuk published X that “the people of Belarus had no choice.”
Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that President Vladimir Putin – who ruled Russia since 2000 – congratulated his close ally Lukashenko on his “strong victory.”
Peskov said Moscow believes that the Belarusian elections were “legal, organized and transparent elections” and selected “the voices that appear from the West.”
The leaders of China, Venezuela and Pakistan also congratulated Lukashenko.
The leader of the Belarusian opposition, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, rejected the elections as “another political farce.”
She claimed victory in the 2020 elections, where she stood in the position of her imprisoned husband.
Lukashenko mistakenly believed that Tikhanovskaya would not pose any challenge to him – but after she appeared that she won the massive support, she was expelled from the country.
There is still opposition now in Belarus, which closed all independent media.
On Sunday evening, Lukashenko Steve Rosenberg told BBC that his “Mukhtaroun” opponents are imprisoned or denied.
“We have not forced anyone to leave the country,” he said, adding that “he cannot care about whether (the West) admits to our election.”
This will be the seventh state of Lukashenko in power. It has been, so far, the only leader of Belarus since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
