Longtime Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko has been declared winner of a disputed presidential election, securing a seventh straight term, according to the country’s electoral body.
Lukashenko, whose four opponents on the ballot were loyal to him and praised his 30-year rule, took 86.8 per cent of the vote, according to initial results published by the Central Election Commission on its official Telegram account on Monday.
Election officials said turnout in Sunday’s vote was 85.7 per cent, with about 6.9 million people eligible to vote.
The Belarusian leader has won every presidential election since 1994, in polls that his opponents, Western governments and rights groups rejected as a “sham”.
But Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Lukashenko, saying the election showed he had the “undoubted” backing of the people.
The war in Ukraine has bound Lukashenko more tightly than ever to Putin, and Russian tactical nuclear weapons are now deployed in Belarus.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping also congratulated Lukashenko.
Other politicians, especially those in Europe, said the vote was neither free nor fair because independent media were banned in the country and all leading opposition figures had either been jailed or forced to seek exile abroad.
The country’s last presidential election in 2020 ended with nationwide protests, unprecedented in the history of the country of nine million people. The opposition and Western nations accused Lukashenko of rigging the election and imposed sanctions.
In response, his government launched a sweeping crackdown, leaving more than 1,000 people imprisoned, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski, founder of the Viasna Human Rights Centre.
Asked about the jailing of his opponents, Lukashenko told a news conference on Sunday that they had chosen their own fate.
Exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya told the Reuters news agency Lukashenko engineered his re-election as part of a “ritual for dictators”.