Putin Ally Lukashenko Declared Winner in Belarus Election Scorned by the West as a Sham 

A handout photo made available by the Belarusian President's press service shows Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko casting his ballot as he votes in the presidential elections at a polling station in Minsk, Belarus, 26 January 2025. (EPA/Belarus President Press Service / Handout)
A handout photo made available by the Belarusian President's press service shows Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko casting his ballot as he votes in the presidential elections at a polling station in Minsk, Belarus, 26 January 2025. (EPA/Belarus President Press Service / Handout)
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Putin Ally Lukashenko Declared Winner in Belarus Election Scorned by the West as a Sham 

A handout photo made available by the Belarusian President's press service shows Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko casting his ballot as he votes in the presidential elections at a polling station in Minsk, Belarus, 26 January 2025. (EPA/Belarus President Press Service / Handout)
A handout photo made available by the Belarusian President's press service shows Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko casting his ballot as he votes in the presidential elections at a polling station in Minsk, Belarus, 26 January 2025. (EPA/Belarus President Press Service / Handout)

Belarusian leader and Russian ally Alexander Lukashenko extended his 31-year rule on Monday after electoral officials declared him the winner of a presidential election that Western governments rejected as a sham.

"You can congratulate the Republic of Belarus, we have elected a president," Igor Karpenko, the head of the country's Central Election Commission, told a news conference in the early hours of Monday.

Lukashenko, who faced no serious challenge from the four other candidates on the ballot, took 86.8% of the vote, according to initial results published on the Central Election Commission's official Telegram account.

European politicians said the vote was neither free nor fair because independent media are banned in the former Soviet republic and all leading opposition figures have either been jailed or forced to flee abroad.

"The people of Belarus had no choice. It is a bitter day for all those who long for freedom & democracy," German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock posted on X.

Election officials said turnout was 85.7% in the election, in which 6.9 million people were eligible to vote.

Asked about the jailing of his opponents, Lukashenko had told a news conference on Sunday that they had chosen their own fate.

"Some chose prison, some chose 'exile', as you say. We didn't kick anyone out of the country," he told a rambling news conference that lasted more than four hours.

A close ally of President Vladimir Putin who allowed the Russian leader to use his country as a staging area for sending troops into Ukraine in 2022, Lukashenko had earlier defended his jailing of dissidents and declared: "I don't give a damn about the West."

Exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya told Reuters this week that Lukashenko had engineered 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 did not care whether the West recognized the election.

PUTIN ALLY

The European Union and the United States both said they did not acknowledge him as the legitimate leader of Belarus after he used his security forces to crush mass protests following the last election in 2020, when Western governments backed Tsikhanouskaya's claim that Lukashenko had rigged the count and cheated her of victory.

Human rights group Viasna, which is banned as an "extremist" organization in Belarus, says there are still about 1,250 political prisoners in his jails though Lukashenko has freed more than 250 in the past year on what he called humanitarian grounds.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Sunday that Belarus had "just unilaterally released an innocent American", whom he named as Anastassia Nuhfer.

He gave no further details about the case, which had not been made public.

The war in Ukraine has bound Lukashenko more tightly than ever to Putin, and Russian tactical nuclear weapons are now deployed in Belarus.

If the conflict ends, political analysts say he is most likely to seek to restore his ties with the West in an attempt to get sanctions lifted.



Study: Highest Number of Conflicts Worldwide in 2024 Since 1946

Palestinians mourn their relatives who were killed in an Israeli military strike on Gaza, during their funeral in al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, Tuesday, June 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
Palestinians mourn their relatives who were killed in an Israeli military strike on Gaza, during their funeral in al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, Tuesday, June 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
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Study: Highest Number of Conflicts Worldwide in 2024 Since 1946

Palestinians mourn their relatives who were killed in an Israeli military strike on Gaza, during their funeral in al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, Tuesday, June 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
Palestinians mourn their relatives who were killed in an Israeli military strike on Gaza, during their funeral in al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, Tuesday, June 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

The world saw the highest number of armed conflicts in almost 80 years in 2024, dethroning 2023 as a record year, a Norwegian study published Wednesday showed, highlighting the risks linked to a US disengagement.

Last year, 61 conflicts were registered in the world across 36 countries, with some countries experiencing several simultaneous conflicts, the report by the Peace Research Institute of Oslo (Prio) said.

In 2023, there were 59 conflicts in 34 countries, AFP reported.

"This is not just a spike -- it's a structural shift," said Siri Aas Rustad, the main author of the report which covers trends in armed conflicts in the period 1946-2024.

"The world today is far more violent, and far more fragmented, than it was a decade ago," she said.

Africa remained the most ravaged continent, with 28 conflicts involving at least one state, followed by Asia with 17, the Middle East with 10, Europe with three and the Americas with two.

More than half of these countries experienced two or more conflicts.

The number of deaths resulting from fighting remained around the same level as in 2023, at about 129,000, making 2024 the fourth-deadliest year since the end of the Cold War in 1989, the study said.

The death toll was led by the wars in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip, as well as clashes in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.

"Now is not the time for the United States -– or any global power -– to retreat from international engagement," Rustad said.

"Isolationism in the face of rising global violence would be a profound mistake with long-term human life consequences," she said, a reference to US President Donald Trump's "America First" campaign.

"It is a mistake to assume the world can look away. Whether under President Trump or any future administration, abandoning global solidarity now would mean walking away from the very stability the US helped build after 1945," she said.

The study is based on data compiled by Sweden's Uppsala University.