Lukashenko wins over 86% of votes, extends 31 years of rule in Belarus
Alexander Lukashenko, Europe’s longest-serving leader, has extended his 31-year tenure in Belarus after being declared the winner of the January 26 presidential election.
Lukashenko secured a seventh five-year term by winning a landslide 86.82% of the vote, according to the Central Election Commission (CEC). Out of approximately 6.9 million eligible voters, 5.9 million cast their ballots.
The strongman leader, who has ruled the former Soviet republic since 1994, previously won the contentious 2020 elections with over 80% of the vote, according to official results.
Exiled opposition figure Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who claimed victory in the first round of voting in 2020, dismissed the recent election as a “sham” and “predictable.”
“Like Putin last year, Lukashenka gave himself around 87 percent of the 'vote' – what a coincidence,” she wrote on X.
In the lead-up to the election, the European Union and the United States both stated that it could not be free and fair because independent media are banned in Belarus and all of the main opposition leaders have been imprisoned or forced to leave the country.
