The European Parliament has condemned this weekend’s presidential election in Belarus as a “sham” designed to keep the country’s long-serving dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka in power. In a resolution adopted ahead of the January 26 vote, MEPs noted the absence of any credible opposition candidates and called for the strengthening of sanctions against Belarus.
Days earlier, the United States said the vote could not be free or fair due to the “repressive environment” in the country. “The United States joins many of our European allies in assessing that elections cannot be credible in an environment where censorship is ubiquitous and independent media outlets no longer exist,” commented US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
This international condemnation comes as no surprise. Since the early 1990s, seventy year old Lukashenka has been steadily concentrating power in his own hands. For more than three decades, he has fostered an authoritarian political culture in Belarus that closely echoes the Soviet past.
The political climate became particularly oppressive following Belarus’s last presidential election in 2020, which saw opposition candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya emerge from obscurity to mobilize a grassroots movement demanding change. When the authorities then rigged the vote in favor of Lukashenka, weeks of nationwide protests erupted that threatened to topple the regime.
Lukashenka was ultimately able to cling onto power in 2020 thanks to support from the Kremlin. In the wake of the protests, he launched a ruthless crackdown on all opposition, leading to thousands of arrests and reports of grave human rights abuses. Targets included civil society and the country’s last remaining independent media outlets. Hundreds of thousands fled Belarus to avoid possible persecution.
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The Belarusian dictator is clearly in no mood to repeat the mistakes of 2020, when his decision to allow a wildcard outsider onto the ballot backfired so disastrously. Ahead of Sunday’s vote, only the tamest of regime-approved opponents have been permitted to participate.
Lukashenka was so fearful of the upcoming election that he “completely cleansed the political field, leaving no room for alternative candidates,” commented Hanna Liubakova, a journalist from Belarus who has been forced to remain in exile since the 2020 protests. “The trauma of 2020 and deep distrust remain high,” she noted.
Tsikhanouskaya, the rival candidate in 2020 who now leads the Belarusian democratic opposition from exile, was similarly critical of the forthcoming vote. “The Belarus dictator’s so-called ‘election’ is nothing more than a sham,” she commented. “We won’t be fooled. All political prisoners must be freed and repressions must end.”
With Lukashenka guaranteed to win Sunday’s vote, the only remaining question is the margin of victory he chooses on this occasion. In 2020, he was officially credited with 81 percent, despite widespread claims that Tsikhanouskaya had actually garnered more votes. “The last intriguing moment in this sham election is how many votes Lukashenka will claim for himself,” commented Liubakova.
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Lukashenka’s deepening dictatorship is not only a threat to domestic human rights and democratic values in Belarus itself. The country is also a key ally of the Kremlin and a junior partner in the emerging axis of autocratic regimes that includes Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.
Minsk and Moscow have enjoyed close relations for decades and are bound together in a broad but vague Union State agreement dating back to the 1990s. Despite this apparent intimacy, Lukashenka has spent much of his reign attempting to maintain a degree of independence by balancing between Russia and the West. However, this strategy collapsed in the wake of the 2020 uprising, which left the Belarus dictator shunned by Western leaders and heavily reliant on Putin for his continued political survival.
Since 2020, Lukashenka has permitted the dramatic expansion of Russian influence over Belarus in a process some have likened to a creeping annexation of the country. He allowed tens of thousands of Russian troops to use Belarus as a base for the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and has since begun hosting limited quantities of Russian nuclear weapons. Lukashenka has also been linked to alleged Russian war crimes including the forced deportation of Ukrainian children.
Meanwhile, Belarus is facing accusations of attempting to undermine the European Union through weaponized migration on the country’s western border. According to a recent POLITICO report, Belarus is helping large numbers of migrants enter the EU illegally as part of Lukashenka’s “revenge” for the imposition of sanctions. In response, Poland is beefing up security at the Belarusian border and calling for the EU to take tougher action.
Sunday’s sham election is a timely reminder of the ongoing struggle for basic freedoms against a brutal dictatorship in the geographical heart of Europe. Western governments can play a meaningful role in this struggle by supporting independent Belarusian media, backing human rights defenders, imposing further sanctions, and highlighting the plight of the country’s many political prisoners. While international attention is rightly focused on Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, Western leaders must not forget that neighboring Belarus also remains a critical front in the fight against resurgent authoritarianism.
Mercedes Sapuppo is an assistant director at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.
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The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.
The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.
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Image: A woman walks past a presidential election campaign sign in Minsk, Belarus. January 23, 2025. (REUTERS/Evgenia Novozhenina)