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Belarusian autocrat Alexander Lukashenko said he had “no regrets” about allowing Russia to use his country to invade Ukraine, amid condemnation of the “sham” presidential vote almost certain to extend his 31 years of authoritarian rule.
Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, said on Sunday that the vote was a “bitter day for all those who long for freedom and democracy”.
“The people of Belarus had no choice. Instead of free and fair elections and a life without fear and arbitrariness, they experience oppression, repression and human rights violations on a daily basis,” she said, ahead of exit polls that showed Lukashenko winning 87.6% of the vote.
The EU’s chief diplomat, Kaja Kallas, said Sunday’s “sham election” had been “neither free, nor fair” and that the EU would maintain sanctions against the regime.
Lukashenko, a 70-year-old former collective farm boss, has been in power since 1994. After the last elections in August 2020, he launched a brutal crackdown in response to the largest ever anti-government protests in Belarusian history. His international isolation deepened in 2022 when he made his country a launchpad for Russian president Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Speaking on Sunday, Lukashenko said he had “no regrets” about allowing his “older brother” Putin to use Belarus to invade Ukraine. “I do not regret anything,” he said in response to a question from AFP, during an often rambling press conference with international media that ran over four hours.
He also declined to say if this would be his last election, adding that he was “not about to die”, and had no specific successor in mind. Amid rumours of a family succession, Lukashenko denied that any of his three sons would want to take over from him.
The autocrat said there could be “future presidents” among current regional governors, or members of government or parliament but not a woman, making the point in characteristically misogynistic fashion. “I’m totally against a woman doing this job. A woman can’t be a dictator but we have quite a few men who could be leaders,” he said.
He also denied that the recent release of political prisoners was motivated by an attempt to build bridges with the west.
More than 250 political prisoners have been freed since last July, although 1,250 remain in jail. Some analysts see this as an attempted rapprochement with the west, as Lukashenko vies not to be left out of any detente that could result from a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.
But Lukashenko rejected this interpretation, saying: “I don’t give a damn about the west”.
Some of his political opponents, he said, had “chosen” prison or exile. Asked about one of Belarus’s most prominent jailed opposition figures, Maria Kolesnikova, Lukashenko said she was “fine” and that he had intervened personally to bring about a visit from her father last year. Kolesnikova, one of the leaders of the 2020 campaign to unseat Lukashenko, has been in jail since September 2020. Held in strict isolation, she was long denied visits from family or lawyers, until her father was allowed to visit her in prison last November.
Up to half a million Belarusians are thought to have fled their homeland after the brutal repression of 2020, with the largest communities of exiles in Lithuania and Poland.
Criticism of the regime is banned in Belarus. People interviewed by AFP in Minsk and other towns who voiced support for Lukashenko were afraid of giving their surnames. “I will vote for Lukashenko because things have improved since he became president,” said 42-year-old farmer Alexei in the tiny village of Gubichi in south-eastern Belarus. But, like many in Belarus, he said he wished “for there not to be a war” in neighbouring Ukraine.
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the Belarusian opposition leader in exile, said the so-called election was “a sham designed to tighten oppression” and “a farce built on fear, repression and lies”.
She entered the 2020 contest after her husband, the opposition candidate, Syarhei Tsikhanouski, was arrested on the campaign trail. This weekend she called on Belarusians abroad to demonstrate in solidarity, with “Lukashenko to the shredder” rallies planned in Warsaw, London, Stockholm and Vienna.
Footage on social media showed people carrying the white-red-white traditional Belarusian flag – abolished by Lukashenko in 1995 – at events in different cities. Posting such footage, Tsikhanouskaya’s aide, Franak Viačorka, said the regime was threatening to “persecute the relatives who are in Belarus of those participating”.
Tsikhanouskaya was due to meet Kallas and the EU’s 27 foreign ministers on Sunday evening.
Lithuania’s prime minister, Gintautas Paluckas, suggested there would be more sanctions on Belarus, without specifying whether these would come from his government alone or the whole EU. “We will stay vocal about the regime’s repressions and involvement in Russia’s war against Ukraine, which will be both responded [to] by sanctions.”
