The last time Belarus staged a presidential election in 2020, authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko was declared the winner with 80% of the vote. That triggered cries of fraud, months of protests and a harsh crackdown with thousands of arrests.

Not wanting to risk such unrest again by those opposing his three decades of iron-fisted rule, Lukashenko advanced the timing of the 2025 election — from the warmth of August to frigid January, when demonstrators are less likely to fill the streets.

With many of his political opponents either jailed or exiled abroad, the 70-year-old Lukashenko is back on the ballot, and when the election concludes on Sunday, he is all but certain to add a seventh term as the only leader most people in post-Soviet Belarus have ever known.

Here’s what to know about Belarus, its election and its relationship with Russia:

‘Europe’s last dictator’ and his reliance on Russia

Belarus was part of the Soviet Union until its collapse in 1991. The Slavic nation of 9 million people is sandwiched between Russia and Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, the latter three all NATO members. It was overrun by Nazi Germany in World War II.

It’s been closely allied with Moscow and Russian President Vladimir Putin — himself in power for a quarter century.

Lukashenko, a former state farm director, was first elected in 1994, riding public anger over a catastrophic plunge in living standards after chaotic and painful free-market reforms. He promised to combat corruption.

Throughout his rule, he’s relied on subsidies and political support from Russia, allowing it to use Belarusian territory to invade Ukraine in 2022 and later agreeing to host some of Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons.

Lukashenko was dubbed “Europe’s last dictator” early in his tenure, and he has lived up to that nickname, harshly silencing dissent and extending his rule through elections that the West has called neither free nor fair.

An open admirer of the Soviet Union, he has restored Soviet-style controls on the economy, discouraged use of the Belarusian language in favor of Russian, and pushed for abandoning the country’s red-and-white national flag in favor of one similar to what it used as a Soviet republic.

Belarus’ top security agency kept its fearsome Soviet-era name of the KGB, and it’s the only country in Europe to keep the death penalty, with executions carried out with a gunshot to the back of the head.

Flirtation with the West, repression at home

As he bargained with the Kremlin over the years for more subsidies, Lukashenko periodically tried to appease the West by easing repressions. Such flirtations ended after he unleashed a violent suppression of dissent after the 2020 election.

That election to his sixth term was widely seen at home and abroad as rigged, and it sparked months of massive protests, the largest ever seen in Belarus.

Authorities responded with a sweeping crackdown in which over 65,000 people were arrested, thousands were beaten by police and hundreds of independent media outlets and nongovernmental organizations were closed and outlawed, drawing Western sanctions.

Leading opposition figures have either been imprisoned or fled the country. Human rights activists say Belarus holds about 1,300 political prisoners, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski, the founder of the country’s top rights group, Viasna.

“Through a brutal campaign against all dissent, the authorities have created a suffocating climate of fear, silencing anything and anyone who challenges the government,” said Marie Struthers, Amnesty International’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia director.

Maneuvering before the election

Although Lukashenko’s current term doesn’t expire until summer, the election was moved up in what officials said would allow him “to exercise his powers at the initial stage of strategic planning.”

Belarusian political analyst Valery Karbalevich gave a different reason. “There won’t be mass protests in freezing January,” he said.

In other maneuvering, Lukashenko has recently pardoned more than 250 people described as political prisoners by rights activists.

The pardons, however, come amid heightened repressions aimed at uprooting any remaining signs of dissent. Hundreds have been arrested in raids that targeted relatives and friends of political prisoners. Other arrests include participants in online chats organized by residents of apartment buildings in various cities.

Katya Glod, policy fellow with the European Leadership Network, noted the election “takes place in the atmosphere of fear and repression, which has been really unrelenting since 2020.”

Unlike the 2020 election, Lukashenko faces only token challengers, with other opposition candidates rejected for the ballot by the Central Election Commission. The election began with early voting Tuesday and concludes Sunday.

“The politicians who once dared to challenge Lukashenko are now literally rotting in prison in torture conditions, there has been no contact with them for over a year, and some of them are in very poor health,” said Viasna representative Pavel Sapelka.

Opposition leader-in-exile Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who challenged Lukashenko in the 2020 election and was forced to flee the country afterward, says the latest vote is a farce and urged Belarusians to vote against every candidate. Her husband, activist Siarhei Tsikhanouski, tried to run four years ago but was jailed and remains imprisoned.

Under Russia’s nuclear umbrella

In December 2024, Lukashenko and Putin signed a treaty that gave security guarantees to Belarus that included the possible use of Russian nuclear weapons.

The pact followed Moscow’s revision of its nuclear doctrine, which for the first time placed Belarus under the Russian nuclear umbrella amid tensions with the West over the war in Ukraine.

Lukashenko says Belarus is hosting dozens of Russian tactical nuclear weapons. Their deployment extends Russia’s capability to target Ukraine and NATO allies in Europe.

He also said Belarus will prepare to host Russia’s Oreshnik hypersonic missile that was used in Ukraine for the first time in November. Putin said the missiles could be deployed to Belarus in the second half of 2025, remaining under Moscow’s control while Minsk will select the targets.

Source: AP

--Agencies