The editor-in-chief of Charter97.org, Natalia Radina, commented on the so-called "elections" in Belarus:
There were no elections in Belarus. In fact, there haven't been any in our country for the past 30 years.
Since 1994, when the dictator Lukashenko came to power, there has not been a single free and democratic election in Belarus. All elections, including presidential, parliamentary, and local ones, as well as referendums, were not recognized by the international community, and their results were massively falsified. Therefore, the presidential elections in Belarus in 2025 cannot be considered an election campaign. Today, this can be compared to elections in a concentration camp: prisoners "choose" the camp leader under the barrels of armed guards.
After the brutal suppression of the people's protests in 2020, Belarus no longer has independent media, human rights organizations, civil society organizations, or opposition political parties and movements. For the past five years, mass repression has been waged against citizens, and thousands of political prisoners remain in the country's prisons.
The farce that Lukashenko calls "elections" this year lacks even the usual decor. No opposition candidates participated in the campaign, and the authorities appointed only four spoilers, whose complete dependence is quite obvious. The election commissions across the country were made up exclusively of trusted and experienced falsifiers. The OSCE ODIHR observers were not invited, because this time the show turned out to be completely unsuccessful.
Of course, people were forcibly herded to polling stations. We can see this from the unusually high number of early votes: workers from state enterprises, hospital doctors, teachers, military personnel, law enforcement officers, and prisoners were all forced to go.
However, on January 26, we still saw that many Belarusians ignored this farce, understanding that their ballots would not affect the outcome: dictator Lukashenko would once again fabricate false "support" figures. In fact, on January 26, polling stations were almost empty. Even at the station where the dictator himself came to vote, he was only second on the list.
Lukashenko has no support among Belarusians today, and he knows it well, which is why he staged this entire circus. However, no one was fooled by the clownery: neither Belarusians nor Western countries, who immediately declared their non-recognition of this farce.
Therefore, what happened today is completely unimportant. What matters is that changes in Belarus can happen at any moment. In 2021, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad garnered more than 90 percent "support" in similar fraudulent elections, but his regime collapsed in just 12 days. The same will happen to Lukashenko, I am convinced of it. Serious changes are brewing in our region, and no one will be able to "freeze" these processes.
