On Sunday, President Alexander Lukashenko's smiling face peeked out from election posters across Belarus as the country held organized elections that virtually guaranteed the 70-year-old autocrat another term in office on top of his three decades in power.
“Required!” – say posters under a photo of Lukashenko with folded hands. This phrase was responded to by groups of voters in campaign videos after allegedly asking if they wanted him to serve again.
But his opponents, many of whom are imprisoned or exiled abroad because of his ruthless suppression of dissent and free speech, would disagree. They call the elections a sham – just like the last one in 2020, which sparked months of protests unprecedented in the history of the country of nine million people.
The crackdown resulted in more than 65,000 arrests and thousands beaten, prompting condemnation and sanctions from the West.
His ironclad rule since 1994 – Lukashenko took office two years after the collapse of the Soviet Union – earned him the nickname “Europe's last dictator”, relying on subsidies and political support from close ally Russia.
He allowed Moscow to use its territory to invade Ukraine in 2022 and even host some of Russia's tactical nuclear weapons, but he continued to campaign under the slogan “Peace and security”, arguing that he had saved Belarus from being drawn into the war.
“It is better to have a dictatorship like in Belarus than a democracy like in Ukraine,” Lukashenko said with his characteristic bluntness.
Fearing a repeat of electoral unrest
Relying on the support of Russian President Vladimir Putin – who himself was in office for a quarter of a century – helped him weather the 2020 protests.
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Observers believe Lukashenko feared a repeat of these mass demonstrations amid economic problems and fighting in Ukraine, so he scheduled the vote for January, when few would want to fill the streets again, rather than August. He faces only symbolic opposition.
“The trauma of the 2020 protests was so deep that Lukashenko decided not to take any risks this time and chose the most reliable option, when the vote is more like a special operation to maintain power than an election,” said Belarusian political scientist Valery Karbalevich.
Lukashenko has repeatedly declared that he is not clinging to power and will “quietly and calmly hand it over to the new generation.”
His 20-year-old son Nikolai traveled around the country giving interviews, signing autographs and playing the piano at campaign events. The father made no mention of his health condition, although he was seen to have difficulty walking and sometimes spoke with a hoarse voice.
“Lukashenko campaigned actively despite visible health problems, and this means he still has a lot of energy,” Karbalevich said. “The question of successor only becomes important when a leader is preparing to step down. But Lukashenko is not going to leave.”
Major political opponents imprisoned or exiled
Leading opponents fled abroad or were thrown in prison. Nearly 1,300 political prisoners are being held in the country, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialyatsky, founder of the Viasna Human Rights Center.
Since July, Lukashenko has pardoned over 250 people described by activists as political prisoners. At the same time, however, the authorities tried to suppress dissent, arresting hundreds of people in raids that targeted relatives and friends of political prisoners and anyone participating in online activities organized by apartment blocks in various cities.
Viasna said authorities detained 188 people last month alone. Activists and people who donated money to opposition groups were summoned by police and forced to sign documents stating that they had been warned against participating in illegal demonstrations, rights activists say.
All four of Lukashenko's challengers taking part in the vote are loyal to him and praise his rule.
“I am entering the race not against, but together with, Lukashenko and I am ready to serve as his vanguard,” said Communist Party candidate Sergei Syrankov, who supports the criminalization of LGBTQ+ activities and the reconstruction of monuments to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.
Candidate Alexander Chizhnyak, head of the Republican Party of Labor and Justice, led the Minsk constituency in 2020 and promised to prevent a “repeat of riots.”
Oleg Gaidukevich, head of the Liberal Democratic Party, supported Lukashenko in 2020 and insisted that other candidates would “make Lukashenko's enemies sick.”
The fourth challenger, Hanna Kanapatska, actually received 1.7% of the vote in 2020 and claims to be the “only democratic alternative to Lukashenko”, promising to lobby for the release of political prisoners but warning supporters against “excessive initiative”.
Exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who fled Belarus under government pressure after challenging the president in 2020, told The Associated Press that Sunday's election was a “senseless farce and Lukashenko ritual.”
Voters should cross off everyone on the ballot, she said, and world leaders should not accept the result in a country “where all independent media and opposition parties have been destroyed and prisons are filled with political prisoners.”
“As the no-election vote approaches, the repression has become even more brutal, but Lukashenko behaves as if hundreds of thousands of people are still standing in front of his palace,” she said.
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On Wednesday, the European Parliament called on the European Union to reject the election results.
The media freedom monitoring organization Reporters Without Borders filed a complaint against Lukashenko to the International Criminal Court in connection with his suppression of freedom of speech, as a result of which 397 journalists have been arrested since 2020. 43 were found to be in prison.
Fear of vote fraud
According to the Central Electoral Commission, 6.8 million are eligible to vote. However, approximately 500,000 people have left Belarus and cannot vote.
The country's early voting, which began on Tuesday, has created fertile ground for irregularities as ballot boxes will remain unguarded until the final day of the election, the opposition said. Officials said more than 27 percent of voters cast ballots within three days of early voting.
Polling stations have removed curtains covering ballot boxes and voters are prohibited from taking photos of their ballots – a response to a 2020 opposition call for voters to take such photos to make it more difficult for authorities to rig the vote.
Before the elections, the police conducted large-scale exercises. A video from the Ministry of Internal Affairs showed police wearing helmets beating shields with batons as they prepared to disperse the protest. Another shows an officer stopping a man posing as a voter and twisting his arm near a ballot box.
Belarus initially refused to let in observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which monitored previous elections. This month, it reversed course and invited the OSCE when it was too late to organize an observer mission.
Growing dependence on Russia
Lukashenko's support for the war in Ukraine led to the severing of Belarus' ties with the US and the European Union, ending his ploy of using the West to try to get more subsidies from the Kremlin.
“Until 2020, Lukashenko could maneuver and play Russia against the West, but now, when Belarus's status is close to that of a Russian satellite, these North Korea-style elections tie the Belarusian leader even more closely to the Kremlin, shortening the leash,” he said. Artem Shraybman, expert on Belarus at the Carnegie Russia and Eurasia Center.
He predicted that after the election, Lukashenko would be able to try to ease his total dependence on Russia by again trying to reach out to the West.
“Lukashenko's immediate goal is to use the elections to confirm his legitimacy and try to overcome his isolation to at least start a conversation with the West about easing sanctions,” Shraybman said.