Aleksandr Lukashenko has awarded himself a seventh term as president of Belarus, with the West calling the so-called vote a sham and introducing additional sanctions.
Belarusian political observer Artsiom Shraibman told the Kyiv Independent that Lukashenko faces uncertain future after the vote.
Hungary refuses to sign joint EU statement condemning Belarus’s elections, RFE/RL reports.
Fifteen more prisoners freed in tenth round of ‘pardons’ issued by Lukashenko ahead of elections.
Belarus ‘unilaterally releases’ US citizen detained on politically motivated grounds, Washington reports on election day.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) files with ICC complaint against Belarus for systematic crimes against journalists.
Lukashenko claims seventh term amid Western condemnation, sanctions
Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko declared himself president for his seventh consecutive term after holding a presidential election on Jan. 26 that was decried as neither free nor fair.
The first presidential election since the contested 2020 vote was held under conditions of strict repression, with over 1,250 political prisoners behind bars, all but four political parties banned, 1,800 NGOs shut down, and all opposition jailed or exiled.
The Belarusian Central Election Committee released preliminary election results on Jan. 27, presenting Lukashenko with a record 86.82% of the votes. Stalinist Siarhei Syrankou was the runner-up with just 3.21%, scoring lower than the graph of “against all candidates,” which received 3.6% of the vote.
The other token “challengers” fared even worse: Oleg Gaidukevich reportedly landed 2%, “constructive opposition” candidate Hanna Kanapatskaya got 1.86%, and in last place came Alexander Khizhnyak with 1.47%.
The commission also claimed there was a record-high turnout of 85.7%. Nearly half of the votes — 41.81% — were supposedly cast in early voting, a practice criticized for being vulnerable to ballot-stuffing and other manipulations. No polling stations were opened abroad despite the Belarusian diaspora having been significantly enlarged in recent years.
Reportedly, between 300,000 and 500,000 Belarusians have left the country of just under 9.2 million since 2020.
Kate Tsurkan
There were no credible international observation teams monitoring the voting, as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) received an invitation only 10 days prior to the voting, rendering any effective observation impossible.
The head of EU diplomacy, Kaja Kallas, and the EU Commissioner for Enlargement, Marta Kos, issued a statement on behalf of the EU rejecting the legitimacy of Lukashenko’s election.
Western nations, including Australia, Canada, the EU, New Zealand, and the UK, decried the elections as a “sham” in a joint statement. The UK and Canada followed up with a new round of sanctions targeting three Belarusian defense enterprises and six individuals, including Central Election Commission Chairman Ihar Karpenka, law enforcement officials accused of political repression, and heads of prisons. Canada extended restrictions against 10 individuals and 12 companies.
The exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who claimed to have won the previous 2020 presidential race, dismissed this latest election as a “special operation to illegally cling to power.”
“Lukashenko, propped up by (Russian dictator Vladimir) Putin, holds 9 million Belarusians hostage, drags us into war, and betrays our sovereignty,” Tsikhanouskaya wrote on X on Jan. 26.
The exiled opposition held a march in Warsaw in protest at the rigged Belarusian presidential election. The next day, the Belarusian investigative committee claimed to have identified 365 participants in the march and opened in absentia criminal proceedings against them.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin welcomed Lukashenko’s contested election, declaring “Moscow takes no notice of the expected criticism of the elections in Belarus in the West.”
Lukashenko faces uncertainty after 2025 ‘election’
Belarusian political analyst Artsiom Shraibman says Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko is entering a “zone of uncertainty” as he faces turning points in his relations with Russia and the need to resolve the transition of power amid an ongoing domestic political crisis.
Dependent on Russian subsidies and having no room to improve relations with the West, Lukashenko can maintain the current status quo as Moscow’s ally while the active phase of war continues,” Shraibman says.
“Putin is interested in a stable pro-Russian authoritarian Belarus, he will keep it that way,” he told the Kyiv Independent. “The spending on supporting Lukashenko can be categorized as a military expenditure for the Russian government, so it is not something they will try to save money on.”
But depending on how any temporary or long-term settlement of the war affects Russia, Lukashenko might face two “equally unpleasant extremes:” Moscow switching its imperial appetites to Belarus, or losing interest in its client state altogether, leaving Lukashenko without financial aid.
Lukashenko may seek dialogue with the United States, potentially releasing the remaining prisoners with U.S. ties. However, Shraibman notes that Lukashenko has little to offer to attract Western interest, given his “peripheral role” in resolving the war.
Repression in Belarus, which has accelerated in the past few months, may decrease in the absence of election campaigns in the near term, but will remain sufficient to maintain a chokehold on society. While the individual fates of some political prisoners could be decided with pardons, Shraibman does not foresee and large-scale political “thaw,” especially not in light of another fundamental issue — the possible transition of power.
Lukashenko has long hinted that he might give up power, but has repeatedly backtracked. Lukashenko took his first real step to standing down, Shraibman argues, in 2022 when the dictator introduced the All-Belarus People's Assembly, an extra-governmental body, and made himself its head. So far it has no real powers, but it is effectively an institutional bolt hole to which Lukashenko might retreat after giving up the presidency.
“He is thinking about (the transition of power) and preparing for it, but this constitutional framework does not place any deadlines on him,” Shraibman explains. At least until 2035, according to the Belarusian constitution, he can hold both positions: the presidency, and the head of the assembly.”
According to the analyst, another action that might indicate that Lukashenko is preparing to hand over the reins of power would be the selection and cultivation of a successor.
“But until we see some already high-profile official gets catapulted up the nomenclature ladder, and starts to be painted as a future leader, the only other reliable indicator of the chances of a transition of power is the state of (Lukashenko’s) health.”
Hungary blocks joint EU statement condemning elections in Belarus, RFE/RL reports
Hungary refused to sign a joint EU members statement rejecting the presidential election in Belarus, sources told U.S. government-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) in Brussels.
Failing to achieve unilateral support from all 27 members of the bloc, the head of EU diplomacy, Kaja Kallas, issued her own statement declaring that the Jan. 26 .” In particular, Kallas criticized the late invitation sent to observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which prevented the proper monitoring of critical stages of the electoral campaign. She also called for the release of all political prisoners in Belarus.
Initially, both Hungary and Slovakia refused to sign the draft EU joint statement, which referred to the elections in Belarus as “undemocratic.” RFE/RL said the draft statement also cited a “relentless and unprecedented level of repression” that “has deprived the electoral process of any legitimacy.”
Representatives of Slovakia later agreed to sign, but Hungary, led by Russia-leaning Prime Minister Viktor Orban, could not be persuaded.
Hungary has also consistently resisted stricter sanctions against Russia and Belarus, as well as increased European support for Ukraine. Hungarian Foreign Affairs Minister Péter Szijjártó was the only top-ranking European official since the fraudulent 2020 elections and subsequent crackdown on dissent.
15 political prisoners released on eve of sham elections in Belarus
Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko released 15 more political prisoners ahead of the country’s sham presidential elections, rigged to ensure the Belarusian leader was elected for a seventh consecutive term.
In the ten rounds of “pardons” that the Lukashenko regime initiated in July 2024 ahead of the Jan. 26 presidential elections, 293 political prisoners were released from custody. Despite the releases, the crackdown on dissent in Belarus continues, and some 1,250 individuals remain behind bars on politically motivated grounds.
According to Lukashenko’s press office, eight of the released prisoners were convicted of “crimes of extremism” – a charge frequently brought up against political opponents since the fraudulent 2020 presidential elections.
The other seven released had been found guilty of drug-related crimes.
The announcement of the pardons, published on Jan. 24, two days prior to the elections, did not give the names of those being released but said that five men and three women were among pardoned political prisoners. Five reportedly have children, and one woman is pregnant. Lukashenko’s press office again presented the pardons as “demonstrations of mercy.”
Exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya in a Reuters interview published earlier accused Lukashenko of “playing games” with political prisoners. Belarusian political analysts consider the pardons to be part of Lukashenko’s strategy to revive relations with the West, which were ruptured after Lukashenko’s brutal crackdown on civil society in the aftermath of the 2020 elections and after he supported Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Since the 2020 election, over 60,000 Belarusian citizens have been detained for political reasons, and the count continues to rise, according to the Minsk-based human rights group Viasna.
Kateryna Denisova
Belarus releases detained US citizen on election day, Washington says
Belarus has “unilaterally released” a detained U.S. citizen, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Jan. 26 — the main day of voting in the sham Belarusian presidential election.
The alleged release follows ten rounds of prisoner “pardons” by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, which started in July 2024 in the run up to the 2025 presidential elections. The pardons have been dismissed as window-dressing by exiled Lukashenko opponents: while 293 prisoners have been released, the number of political prisoners remains firmly fixed at 1,250 individuals in custody because political arrests are continuing in Belarus.
Without providing details of the release, Rubio claimed in a post on X that U.S. citizen Anastasia Nuhfer was now free.. It remains unclear how the release was organized and if any concessions were made to achieve it.
Speaking at a press conference on election day, Lukashenko claimed that by releasing political prisoners, he was not seeking to repair relations with the West. However, he also claimed to be in direct negotiations with “the United States and others” on the matter of political prisoners.
The U.S. State Department later confirmed to the Associated Press that Nuhfer had been detained in early December 2024. Former top-ranking Belarusian diplomats anonymously told the AP that the woman was detained in connection with 2020 protests and released “as a gesture of goodwill.”
Nuhfer has no previously known public profile and Belarusian human rights advocates have no record of such a prisoner. However, activists note that their political prisoner records are incomplete, and the real number of unjustly imprisoned is much higher, as authorities harass the relatives of the detained to prevent them from reporting detentions to human rights watchdogs.
In the week before the election, Belarusian propaganda aired a series of “interviews” with journalists of U.S.-funded broadcaster RFE/RL, including a dual U.S.-Belarusian citizen Yuras Ziankovich – a move that was regarded as a Belarusian opening bargaining offer for the incoming administration. None of the journalists have been reported as being among the released to date.
According to the Minsk-based Viasna Human Rights Center, at least 36 foreign citizens remain jailed in Belarus on politically motivated grounds.
In total, at least 75 foreigners have been subjected to persecution since 2020 in Belarus.
Maria Yeryoma
