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)
TT
20

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.



Rwanda-backed M23 Rebels Occupy 2nd Major City in Congo's East

A general view of pedestrians walking in a street in Bukavu on December 17, 2025. (Photo by Amani Alimasi / AFP)
A general view of pedestrians walking in a street in Bukavu on December 17, 2025. (Photo by Amani Alimasi / AFP)
TT
20

Rwanda-backed M23 Rebels Occupy 2nd Major City in Congo's East

A general view of pedestrians walking in a street in Bukavu on December 17, 2025. (Photo by Amani Alimasi / AFP)
A general view of pedestrians walking in a street in Bukavu on December 17, 2025. (Photo by Amani Alimasi / AFP)

Rwanda-backed rebels have occupied a second major city in mineral-rich eastern Congo, the government said Sunday, as M23 rebels confirmed they were in the city to restore order after it was abandoned by Congolese forces.
The Congo River Alliance, a coalition of rebel groups that includes the M23, said in a statement that its fighters “decided to assist the population of Bukavu” in addressing its security challenges under the “old regime” in the city of 1.3 million people, The Associated Press reported.
"Our forces have been working to restore the security for the people and their property, much to the satisfaction of the entire population,” alliance spokesperson Lawrence Kanyuka said in a statement.
The rebels saw little resistance from government forces against the unprecedented expansion of their reach after years of fighting. Congo's government vowed to restore order in Bukavu but there was no sign of soldiers. Many were seen fleeing on Saturday alongside thousands of civilians.
The M23 are the most prominent of more than 100 armed groups vying for control of eastern Congo’s trillions of dollars in mineral wealth that's critical for much of the world's technology. The rebels are supported by about 4,000 troops from neighboring Rwanda, according to the United Nations experts.
The fighting has displaced more than 6 million people in the region, creating the world's largest humanitarian crisis.
Bernard Maheshe Byamungu, one of the M23 leaders who has been sanctioned by the UN Security Council for rights abuses, stood in front of the South Kivu governor’s office in Bukavu and told residents they have been living in a “jungle."
“We are going to clean up the disorder left over from the old regime,” Byamungu said, as some in the small crowd of young men cheered the rebels on to “go all the way to Kinshasa," Congo's capital, nearly 1,000 miles away.
Congo's communications ministry in a statement on social media acknowledged for the first time that Bukavu had been “occupied” and said the national government was “doing everything possible to restore order and territorial integrity” in the region.
One Bukavu resident, Blaise Byamungu, said the rebels marched into the city that had been “abandoned by all the authorities and without any loyalist force."
“Is the government waiting for them to take over other towns to take action? It’s cowardice,” Byamungu added.
Unlike in 2012, when the M23 briefly seized Goma and withdrew after international pressure, analysts have said the rebels this time are eyeing political power.
The fighting in Congo has connections with a decadeslong ethnic conflict. The M23 says it is defending ethnic Tutsis in Congo. Rwanda has claimed the Tutsis are being persecuted by Hutus and former militias responsible for the 1994 genocide of 800,000 Tutsis and others in Rwanda. Many Hutus fled to Congo after the genocide and founded the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda militia group.
Rwanda says the militia group is “fully integrated” into the Congolese military, which denies it.
But the new face of the M23 in the region — Corneille Nangaa — is not Tutsi, giving the group “a new, more diverse, Congolese face, as M23 has always been seen as a Rwanda-backed armed group defending Tutsi minorities,” according to Christian Moleka, a political scientist at the Congolese think tank Dypol.
Congo’s President Felix Tshisekedi, whose government on Saturday asserted that Bukavu remained under its control, has warned of the risk of a regional expansion of the conflict.
Congo's forces were being supported in Goma by troops from South Africa and in Bukavu by troops from Burundi. But Burundi's president, Evariste Ndayishimiye, appeared to suggest on social media his country would not retaliate in the fighting.
The conflict was high on the African Union summit's agenda in Ethiopia over the weekend, with UN Secretary-General António Guterres warning it risked spiraling into a regional conflagration.
Still, African leaders and the international community have been reluctant to take decisive action against M23 or Rwanda, which has one of Africa's most powerful militaries. Most continue to call for a ceasefire and a dialogue between Congo and the rebels.