Belarus exit poll puts Lukashenko on 87.6% of vote in presidential election
Belarus exit poll puts Lukashenko on 87.6% of vote in presidential election
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Putin ally projected to easily secure seventh term in election that US and EU have said could not be free or fair. Alexander Lukashenko is firmly on track to win a seventh five-year term as Belarusian president with 87.6% of the vote in Sunday’s election, according to an exit poll broadcast on state television.
Lukashenko, a close ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has been in power in the country since 1994. The US and the EU said in the run-up to the election that it could not be free or fair because independent media are banned in Belarus and all leading opposition figures have been jailed or forced to flee abroad.
The electoral commission said turnout was 81.5% in the election, in which 6.9 million people were eligible to vote. Lukashenko – a 70-year-old former collective farm boss – suppressed mass protests against his rule in 2020 and allowed Moscow to use Belarusian territory to invade Ukraine in 2022. The opposition and the west said Lukashenko had rigged the last presidential vote and authorities cracked down on demonstrations, with more than a thousand people still jailed.
All of Lukashenko’s political opponents are either in prison – some held incommunicado – or in exile along with tens of thousands of Belarusians who have fled since 2020. “All our opponents and enemies should understand: do not hope, we will never repeat what we had in 2020,” Lukashenko told a stadium in Minsk during a carefully choreographed ceremony on Friday.
