MINSK (Reuters) -Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko said on Sunday that some of his political opponents had “chosen” to go to prison as he cast his vote in a election that was set to extend his 31-year rule.
As Belarusians voted, Lukashenko sparred with the world’s media at a press conference lasting more than four hours and 20 minutes.
Asked how the election could be free and fair, given that all the main opposition figures are in jail or have fled the country, the veteran leader replied: “Some chose prison, some chose ‘exile’, as you say. We didn’t kick anyone out of the country.”
He said no one was prevented from speaking out in Belarus, but prison was “for people who opened their mouths too wide, to put it bluntly, those who broke the law”.
The United States and the European Union have both described the election as a sham, given the repression of political opponents and the banning of independent media.
“This is a blatant affront to democracy,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on the eve of the vote.
Exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya told Reuters this week that Lukashenko was engineering his re-election as part of a “ritual for dictators”. Demonstrations against him took place on Sunday in Warsaw and other east European cities.
Lukashenko shrugged off the criticism as meaningless and said he didn’t care whether the West decided to recognise the election or not.
The EU and the US both said they did not acknowledge him as the legitimate leader of Belarus after he used his security forces to crush mass protests after the last election in 2020, when Western governments backed Tsikhanouskaya’s claim that he had falsified the results to cheat her of victory.
Tens of thousands of people were arrested. Human rights group Viasna, which is banned as an “extremist” organisation, says there are still some 1,250 political prisoners.
Lukashenko has freed more than 250 in the past year on what he called humanitarian grounds, but he denied this was meant as a signal to the West to try to repair relations.
“I don’t give a damn about the West,” he said, adding that Belarus was willing to talk to the EU but not to “bow before you or crawl on our knees”.
He said that leading dissident Maria Kalesnikava was guilty of “violating the regime” but that she was in sound health and that he had intervened personally to allow her a visit from her father last year. Other prominent prisoners include human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski, serving a 10-year sentence on smuggling charges that he denies.
“In any state you have to take responsibility if you break the law. The law is severe, but it’s the law,” Lukashenko said.
PUTIN ALLY
Lukashenko, who took his small dog with him to a Minsk polling station, is standing against four other candidates, none of whom has mounted any serious challenge. But while there is no doubt about the outcome, he faces tricky choices in a new five-year term, which will be his seventh since 1994.
The war in Ukraine has bound him more tightly than ever to Russian President Vladimir Putin, with Lukashenko offering his country as a launchpad for the 2022 invasion and later agreeing to let Moscow place tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
Lukashenko said he saw “light at the end of the tunnel” as Moscow and Kyiv prepare for possible peace talks in which he said they would have to thrash out a compromise.
Asked if this would be his last election, the 70-year-old ex-Soviet farm boss declined to give a direct answer. He said he was “not about to die”, and had no specific successor in mind.
“When the time comes, we will think about this,” he said.
(Reporting by Reuters in Minsk and Moscow, Mark Trevelyan and Filipp Lebedev in London and Andrew Gray in Brussels; editing by Giles Elgood)
