Alexander Lukashenko, Europe’s longest-serving leader, has extended his 31-year rule in Belarus after being declared the winner of a presidential election that his exiled opponents and Western countries have denounced as a sham.

Unlike in 2020, when Lukashenko allowed an unusually competitive election and faced the greatest threat to his regime since he came to power in 1994, Sunday’s result was never in doubt.

In this stage-managed affair, Lukashenko faced only token opposition, with one candidate admitting he was running merely “alongside” the strongman leader, not instead of him. Official results released early Monday found Lukashenko had won in another landslide with 86.8% of the vote.

The result grants Lukashenko a seventh term in power and cements his grip on the former Soviet republic, a major Russian ally that has played a key role in Moscow’s war against Ukraine, from serving as a launching pad for its full-scale invasion in February 2022 to becoming a staging post for Russian tactical nuclear weapons.

Lukashenko’s reliance on his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, has deepened since the last Belarusian election in 2020, when he faced an unexpectedly stiff challenge from Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, a political novice who entered the race after her husband, Sergei, was jailed and prevented from running.

Although official figures said Lukashenko won by a landslide in 2020, Tsikhanouskaya claimed victory and spearheaded huge protests, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets to demand the end of Lukashenko’s regime.

With Moscow’s backing, the regime responded brutally, imprisoning tens of thousands of protesters and driving Tsikhanouskaya and others into exile. According to Viasna, a Belarusian human rights group, the regime is still holding more than 1,200 political prisoners.

The crackdown was so brutal that Tsikhanouskaya, now living in neighboring Lithuania, declined to call for public protests this time round. Instead, she asked Belarusians simply to vote against all candidates on the heavily-vetted ballots. Her opposition movement called the vote a “a meticulously orchestrated charade designed to perpetuate the illegitimate dictator’s grip on power.”

In a lengthy news conference after casting his vote on Sunday, Lukashenko maintained that Belarus is a democracy because his rivals were given a choice. “Some chose prison, others chose exile,” he told the BBC.

Lukashenko also told reporters that he did not care whether the West recognizes Belarus’ election or not.

Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said the vote was “neither free nor fair,” calling it “a blatant affront to democracy.”

The Kremlin, however, hailed Lukashenko’s victory. China’s President Xi Jinping also congratulated him.

The 70-year-old Lukashenko has given little indication that he intends to step down, even after his seventh term, Nigel Gould-Davies, the former UK ambassador to Belarus, told CNN.

Gould-Davies, who is now a senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said that Lukashenko is unlikely to relinquish power on his own accord.

“Dictators, even if they want to, fear stepping down voluntarily,” he told CNN. “It’s a secret weakness of autocracies.”

Before Sunday’s vote, Lukashenko mocked opposition leaders who he said were waiting for him to “drop dead,” telling them: “Don’t hold your breath.”

(Source: CNN)