Authoritarian president Alexander Lukashenko won the presidential election in Belarus with 80 % of the voting the previous year. That led to decades of protests, a severe onslaught, and thousands of arrests due to the allegations of fraud.
Lukashenko advanced the schedule of the 2025 vote from the warm August to the chilly January, when protesters are less likely to take to the streets, to avoid risking for unrest by those who oppose his three decades of iron-fisted rule.
The 70-year-old Lukashenko is again on the ballot because many of his political rivals are both imprisoned or exiled abroad, and when the election comes to an end on Sunday, he is almost certain to become the only president post-Soviet Belarusian to have ever known.
Here’s what to know about Belarus, its vote and its relationship with Russia:
Belarus, known as” Europe’s last tyrant,” and his reliance on Russia Belarus was a member of the Soviet Union until its fall in 1991. The Slavic state of 9 million persons is sandwiched between Russia and Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, the earlier three all Nato people. In World War II, Nazi Germany seized control of the region.
It has a close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has been in charge for a third of a decade.
Lukashenko, a former state land director, was first elected in 1994, riding public fury over a fatal fall in living standards after disorganized and terrible free-market changes. He promised to fight corruption.
He has relied on subsidies and political support from Russia throughout his rule, which included allowing it to invade Ukraine in 2022 from Belarusian territory and afterward consenting to house some of its tactical nuclear weapons.
Early in his presidency, Lukashenko was called” Europe’s last dictator,” and he has lived up to that title by cruelly stifling opposition and extending his rule through votes that the West has characterized as neither good nor free.
An empty admirer of the Soviet Union, he has restored Soviet-style settings on the market, discouraged use of the Belarusian speech in favor of Russian, and pushed for abandoning the government’s red-and-white national symbol in favor of one similar to what it used as a Russian state.
The KGB, Belarus ‘ most feared organization from the Soviet era, is the only country in Europe to still carry out deaths with a gun to the back of the head.
Persecution at home and flirting with the West As he repeatedly pleaded with the Kremlin for more funding, Lukashenko made frequent attempts to satisfy the West by easing persecutions. After the 2020 election, he violently suppressed opposition and ended these trysts.
That vote, which sparked decades of huge protests, the largest ever to occur in Belarus, was widely perceived at home and abroad as manipulated.
Over 65, 000 people were detained, thousands of people were beaten by officers, and plenty of independent media sources and nongovernmental organizations were sealed and forbidden, drawing Western sanctions as a result of a broad assault.
Leading opposition figures have either been imprisoned or forced to leave the country. Human rights activists say Belarus holds about 1, 300 political prisoners, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski, the founder of the country’s top rights group, Viasna.
” Through a brutal campaign against all dissent, the authorities have created a suffocating climate of fear, silencing anything and anyone who challenges the government”, said Marie Struthers, Amnesty International’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia director.
Moving things before the election Although Lukashenko’s current term won’t expire until the summer, it was moved up to give him the ability to “exert his powers at the first stage of strategic planning,” according to officials.
Valery Karbalevich, a Belarusian political analyst, provided a different explanation. ” There won’t be mass protests in freezing January”, he said.
In other maneuvering, Lukashenko has recently pardoned more than 250 people described as political prisoners by rights activists.
The pardons, however, come amid heightened repressions aimed at uprooting any remaining signs of dissent. In raids that targeted political prisoners ‘ friends and relatives, hundreds have been detained. Participants in online chats held by residents of apartment complexes in various cities were also detained.
The election is “taken place in the atmosphere of fear and repression, which has been really unrelenting since 2020,” according to Katya Glod, a policy fellow with the European Leadership Network.
Unlike the 2020 election, Lukashenko faces only token challengers, with other opposition candidates rejected for the ballot by the Central Election Commission. The election started with Tuesday’s early voting, which ends on Sunday.
The politicians who once dared to challenge Lukashenko are now’absolutely rotting’ in prison under a system of torture, according to Viasna representative Pavel Sapelka.
Opposition leader-in-exile Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who challenged Lukashenko in the 2020 election and was forced to flee the country afterward, says the latest vote is a farce and urged Belarusians to vote against every candidate. Her husband, activist Siarhei Tsikhanouski, tried to run four years ago but was jailed and remains imprisoned.
Under the Russian nuclear umbrella, Lukashenko and Putin ratified a treaty that provided Belarus with security guarantees, including the right to use Russian nuclear weapons.
In response to Moscow’s revision of its nuclear doctrine, which for the first time included Belarus under the Russian nuclear umbrella in the midst of tensions with the West over the conflict in Ukraine, the pact came into force.
Lukashenko claims that Belarus is home to numerous Russian tactical nuclear weapons. Russia’s ability to target Ukraine and NATO allies in Europe is strengthened by their deployment.
He added that Belarus will prepare to house the first-ever Russian-launched Oreshnik hypersonic missile, which was launched in Ukraine in November. Putin predicted that the missiles could be launched into Belarus in the second half of 2025, remaining in Moscow’s control while Minsk chose the targets.
