Putin ally Lukashenko to extend 3-decade rule in sham elections

The dictator of Belarus is set to extend his three-decade grip on power until 2030 after apparently securing nearly 90 per cent of the vote in an election widely accepted as rigged.

Alexander Lukashenko, 70, has won 87.6 per cent of the vote, according to an exit poll broadcast on state television, on a turnout of 81.5 per cent. About seven million people are eligible to vote.

Lukashenko took his small dog, Umka, along to cast his vote at a polling station in Minsk on Sunday. The white Pomeranian temporarily stole the show with crowds, in an election from which all credible opposition candidates have been barred.

Four other candidates are on the ballot paper, but all have voiced their support for Lukashenko, a long-time Russia ally who has been in power since 1994, essentially guaranteeing him a seventh term in power.

“I’m entering the race not against, but together with Lukashenko, and I’m ready to serve as his vanguard,” said Sergei Syrankov, the Communist Party candidate, who wants to criminalise LGBT activities and rebuild monuments to Stalin.

During elections in 2020 he faced widespread protests that threatened his claim to the presidency after opposition figures accused him of rigging the vote to steal victory from Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.

The protests were crushed by Belarusian security forces, who arrested more than 65,000 people, and since then all the main opposition figures have been jailed or gone into exile.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, an increasingly isolated Lukashenko has been bound ever more tightly to the Russian President, Vladimir Putin.

Last week, Putin called Lukashenko and wished him “success” in the elections, according to the Kremlin.

This week Tsikhanouskaya said that Lukashenko was engineering his re-election as part of a “ritual for dictators”, while the EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said: “This is a blatant affront to democracy.

Lukashenko, a former collective farm boss during the Soviet Union, has dismissed criticism of his crackdown on dissent.

Asked how the elections could be considered free and fair, Lukashenko told a press conference on Sunday: “Some chose prison, some chose ‘exile’, as you say. We didn’t kick anyone out of the country.”

He said no one was prevented from speaking out in Belarus, but prison was “for people who opened their mouths too wide, to put it bluntly, those who broke the law”.

He said that he did not care about criticism or whether the West recognised the election. “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”.

Asked if this would be his last election, he declined to give a direct answer. He said he was “not about to die”, and had no specific successor in mind.

“When the time comes, we will think about this,” he said.