The final votes are still being counted and results are not expected to be announced until late Monday, but state television predicted Mr Lukashenko would win with almost 88% of the vote.
advertisementBrussels threatened Belarus with a raft of new sanctions after President Alexander Lukashenko was assured of winning his seventh consecutive election since 1994. The vote is widely understood to have been rigged in the president’s favor, given his iron rule over the country and complete control of its institutions.
“Today’s sham elections in Belarus were neither free nor fair,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kalas said in a joint statement with Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos.
“The relentless and unprecedented repression of human rights and restrictions on political participation and access to independent media in Belarus have delegitimized the electoral process,” the statement said.
They called on the Belarusian government to release political prisoners, including officials from the EU delegation in the capital, Minsk.
Karas and Kos said the decision to invite OSCE observers just 10 days ago meant the group was unable to monitor the electoral process.
“For these reasons, as well as the Belarusian regime’s involvement in Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine and hybrid attacks against neighboring countries, the EU continues to impose restrictive and targeted measures against the Belarusian government,” EU officials said. I will continue to do so.”
He did not elaborate on what the final new sanctions package would cover or when it would be implemented.
Elsewhere in Europe, the election results, in which Lukashenko was expected to receive almost 88% of the vote, were met with derision.
“The Belarusian people had no choice. This is a bitter day for everyone who aspires to freedom and democracy,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Verbock said in a post on X.
In a sarcastic post on X, Poland’s Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski expressed surprise that “only” 87.6% of voters voted for Mr. Lukashenko.
“Will the rest go to jail?” he asked.
Lukashenko’s victory in the 2020 election was also dismissed as a bogus by the West, and the result sparked weeks of widespread protests across the country.
This began a brutal crackdown by security forces, with 65,000 people arrested.
There are an estimated 1,200 political prisoners in Belarusian prisons, and around 500,000 people who are unable to vote because they fled the country after the 2020 elections.
Media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders has filed a complaint against Lukashenko at the International Criminal Court over his crackdown on free speech, which has seen 397 journalists arrested since 2020. The newspaper said 43 people were in prison.
advertisementSince July, Lukashenko has released about 250 people who human rights activists say were imprisoned for political reasons.
Speaking at a press conference lasting more than four hours after voting in Minsk, Lukashenko denied they were political prisoners and said they were released “on the principles of true humanity.”
“They are not political prisoners, they violated the criminal law. If anyone is interested, I can show them the criminal case now and show them which provisions of the law were violated. Our laws are bad. You might say that, but it’s the law.’ That’s what I said,” he said.
At the same press conference, Lukashenko predicted “some kind of resolution” to the Ukraine war in 2025, but that did not necessarily mean a complete end to the fighting.
advertisementMr. Lukashenko is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose government used parts of Belarusian territory to launch its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
“Perhaps we will continue to have conflicts for a long time. We are Slavs. If we start a conflict, it will continue for a long time. But there will be a solution. The light at the end of the tunnel will appear this year. ” he said.
But the accusations from Western leaders and the threat of EU sanctions are unlikely to cause much change for Lukashenko.
“I don’t care about the West,” he said.
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