The chief of Minsk (Reuters) -The Belarusan leader, Alexander Lukashenko, was on the right track to extend his 31 -year rule with 87.6% of the votes during a presidential election on Sunday, according to an exit poll broadcast on the State television, after launching the challenge to the west and defended and defended the imprisonment of dissidents.
The ally close to the Russian president Vladimir Putin has managed Belarus since 1994. The United States and the European Union have both declared in the perspective of the elections that it would be an imposture because the independent media were prohibited in Bélarus and that All the main opposition figures have been sent to the criminal colonies or forced to flee abroad.
Contested by the imprisonment of his opponents, Lukashenko told journalists that they were the authors of their own fate.
“Some have chosen prison, some have chosen” exile “, as you say. We have not expelled anyone from the country,” he told a marathon press conference that lasts more than four hours and 20 minutes.
He said that no one had been prevented from expressing themselves in Bélarus, but that the prison was “for people who opened their mouths too wide, to say it frankly, those who have violated the law”.
The exit survey was released by State TV shortly after the vote is closed. Officials said the participation rate was 81.5% in the elections, during which 6.9 million people were eligible to vote.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on the eve of the vote that it was a “blatant affront to democracy”.
The exiled opposition chief, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, told Reuters this week that Lukashenko generates his re -election as part of a “ritual for dictators”. Demonstrations against him took place Sunday in Warsaw and in other cities in Eastern Europe.
Lukashenko raised the shoulders of criticism as meaningless and said he did not care whether the West had decided to recognize the elections or not.
‘Don’t worry’
The EU and the United States both declared that they did not recognize him as the legitimate chief of Belarus after having used his security forces to crush mass demonstrations after the last elections in 2020, when Western governments have supported the claim of Tsikhanouskaya according to which he had rigged the count and deceived him and deceived victory.
Tens of thousands of people were arrested to protest against the official result, which gave him just over 80% of the votes. The human rights group Viasna, which is prohibited as an “extremist” organization, says that there are still 1,250 political prisoners.
Lukashenko released more than 250 in the past year for what he called humanitarian reasons, but he denied that this was a signal for the West to try to repair relations.
“I don’t care about the West,” he said, adding that the Belarus was ready to speak to the EU but not to “bow to you or crawl on knees”.
He said the main dissident Maria Kalesnikava was guilty of “raping the regime” but that she was in good health and that he had intervened personally to allow her a visit to her father last year. The other eminent prisoners are human rights activists and the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Ales Bialiatski, serving a 10 -year sentence for smuggling traffic.
“In any state, you must assume responsibility if you violate the law. The law is serious, but it is the law,” said Lukashenko.
Putin ally
Lukashenko, who took his little dog with him to vote in a polling station in the capital, made no serious challenge of the four other candidates on the ballot. He said during the campaign that he was too busy to follow him.
But while the result has never been questioned, he faces difficult choices for his next mandate when he sails on relations with Russia and the West – the constant theme of his long rule – in The context of possible talks to put an end to the conflict in Ukraine.
The war bound him more closely than ever to the Russian president Vladimir Putin, with Lukashenko offering his country as a launch for the invasion of 2022 and later accepting to let Moscow place tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
If this ends, political analysts say that he is likely to seek to restore his legitimacy with the West in order to relieve his isolation and to ask for the lifting of the sanctions.
Lukashenko said he had seen “the light at the end of the tunnel” in the war, while Moscow and kyiv are preparing for possible talks in which he said they should eliminate a compromise.
When asked if it would be his last election, the former boss of the 70 -year -old Soviet farm refused to give a direct response. He said he was “not about to die” and had no specific successor in mind.
“When we come, we will think about it,” he said.
