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Belarusians are voting closely The rule of Alexander Lukashenko, in power since 1994 and Europe’s longest-serving leader, is the most certain to extend power.
The last time Belarus held presidential elections in 2020, Lukashenko won in a landslide with more than 80 percent of the vote. The opposition cried foul claiming this Svetlana Tskhanovskaya Right was the winner. Hundreds of thousands in the capital, Minsk, sparked the harshest crackdown in the country’s post-Soviet history.
This year, with the vote, Tskhanovskaya is not asking Belarusians to take to the streets again. She says the costs are too high.
He should know. Since the brutal government response in 2020, Taskhanukia lives in exile with her two children. Human rights activists say Belarus holds more than 1,200 political prisoners, including Tskhenovskaya’s husband Sergey, whom she has been unable to contact for nearly two years.
Tsakhnovskaya only fled in 2020 after her husband was jailed and stopped from running. Perhaps belittling a political novice, Lukashenko allowed Tskhinovskaya, along with two other women, to run against him—an oversight that made him the biggest threat to his decades-long rule.
This time, he’s leaving nothing to chance. Lukashenko will face only token challengers, one of whom is said He is “running alongside the president, not instead of him.” For the first time, there will be no independent observers monitoring the vote and polling stations will not be open abroad, leaving some 3.5 million citizens Outside the country of your vote.
While not calling for mass protests, Tskhanovskaya has urged Belarusians to voice their dissent at the ballot box.
“We call on those who participated in this shameful election to vote against all the candidates,” he wrote on Telegram.
The opposition movement of Taskhanukia has said that the “elections” are merely a carefully orchestrated charade designed to maintain an illegitimate dictator’s grip on power. The European Parliament and the US State Department have also called the election a “shame”.
“Repression comes from weakness, not strength. The unprecedented measures to suppress any opposition make it clear that the Lukashenko government is afraid of its own people.”
Lukashenko, a former Soviet collective farm boss, survived the scare in 2020 thanks to his longtime ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose support has come into existence for the Belarusian government.
After government media employees Resigned In solidarity with the opposition, Putin sent the Kremlin to replace him. Since then, Minsk’s dependence on Moscow has only deepened.
But Moscow is leveraging the price to support it. Russia used Belarus as a launchpad for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and Lukashenko has since allowed Russia to deploy. Strategic nuclear weapons On the soil of Belarus. In December, Lukashenko said He was also preparing to acquire Russia New Ballistic Missile, The “Oreshnik” was first used in the strike on Ukraine late last year.
Since 2020, Lukashenko’s government has stepped up its efforts to quell dissent. As of the end of December 2024, Belarus was holding 1,265 political prisoners, according to Vyasana, a human rights group.
Among them is Alice Bialysky, founder of Viasna, who will receive the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize for documenting rights abuses, along with human rights groups from Russia and Ukraine. The oldest prisoner is 76-year-old Mikhail Lyapika, who was sent for compulsory psychiatric treatment after insulting Lukashenko.
Vyasana’s lawyer, Pawel Cepilka, has said that many detainees are kept in conditions and subjected to treatment that amounts to “torture”.
If he completes his seventh term in office, Lukashenko will be 74 years old. But he has given no indication that he plans to step down. “As long as I have health, I will stay with you,” he said During a visit to a church outside Minsk earlier this month.
Last week, Lukashenko Made fun of Opposition leaders said they were waiting for him to “drop dead”.
“They say: ‘He’s about to die, his voice isn’t the same, he has trouble speaking.’ Don’t hold your breath,” Lukashenko said.
