“Belarus lacks basic conditions to conduct fair elections”, said opposition politician Sergei Kalyakin.
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After casting his vote on Sunday, Mr Lukashenko urged neighbouring Ukraine to stop armed citizens crossing into Belarus after border guards detained a few 200 people in just a week.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is seen on a large… As dictators do, Lukashenko has jailed opponents, crushed opposition marches and as the rumour goes has sanctioned hits on his rivals. The Belgazeta opposition newspaper wrote that state television showed Kolya “make a odd gesture – a kind of dismissive wave – at his elder brothers Viktor and Dmitry” at a recent church ceremony.
Lukashenko, 61, appeared at the polling station with his 11-year-old son, Nikolai, who was wearing the same suit and tie as his father.
Leaders of the embattled opposition had urged Brussels not to lift sanctions and warned they would not recognise the results of the poll, pointing to what they said was widespread fraud. After one of his most outspoken critics, the journalist Svetlana Alexievich, won the Nobel Prize for literature on Thursday and laid into his rule, Lukashenko congratulated her – a major gesture of reconciliation after 21 years during which she was unable to have her books published in Belarus or make public appearances.
In a development that surprised no one, President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus was declared the victor of a fifth term on Monday following an election campaign boycotted by the opposition.
Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko was reelected to a fifth term Sunday, after winning 83 percent of the vote.
A man cast Ballot into a portable polling box during a presidential election in the village of Danilovichi.
Sunday’s vote saw the highest ever turnout for a Belarussian vote, pulling in 86 percent of the electorate.
However, election monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) are expected to announce their findings shortly. “Putin’s funding [to Belarus] is no longer sufficient for the country’s economic ‘miracle, ‘ so Lukashenko wants to get obtain at least a small part of the funds from the western democracies”, Statkevich said in an interview during an anti-government rally of about 900 supporters. “As far as we could observe from Berlin, there has also not been the level of repression around the time of the elections that we have seen in the past”.
Taking into account the results of the quality of the elections, representatives of the CIS mission expressed hope that the European Union may cancel the sanctions imposed on Lukashenko because of human rights violations.
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Nevertheless, his criticism of Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula past year, his hosting of Ukraine peace talks and his pardoning of the six opposition leaders in August suggest he is seeking to improve his image in the West, observers say.
