Photo: kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

This article was first published by Truthmeter.mk (North Macedonia), within the framework of Western Balkans Anti-Disinformation Project.

Pro-Russian propagandists praise Lukashenko’s victory in the Belarus elections, ignoring the fact that he has ruled authoritatively for 30 years, while his critics have been imprisoned, killed or persecuted. His opponents in the elections were his pawns, as were the observers from non-democratic countries such as Iran, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, and Turkmenistan. Propagandists also claim that Lukashenko is a patriot, but he turned Belarus into a Russian province, and he almost never speaks the Belarusian language, which he systematically suppresses. 

Author: Vangel Bashevski 

Debunking the narratives of Lukashenko’s “victory” 

Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko secured his seventh term in the presidential “elections” on January 26, 2025. Pro-Russian propagandists in our country, as well as those in neighboring Serbia, are now celebrating that “victory”, but we will explain what it is actually due to. 

Serbian Novosti reported that Lukashenko “convincingly won”, a claim which was sourced from Sputnik. We have already written about the propagandistic nature of such Russian media outlets. Serbian Happy TV also reported the “convincing victory”, and invited Belarusian Ambassador Sergey Malinovsky to discuss the matter, which he used for propaganda. According to Serbian Politika, Lukashenko’s victory was “more than convincing”, while propagandist Mario Bojic also celebrated it with a tweet. Praise for Lukashenko can also be observed on the YouTube channel Balkan Info: here, here, here, and here. 

We analyze a post in Macedonian, which announced the elections and later added the election results: 

Understandably, the current president, Alexander Lukashenko, has the greatest chance of winning, and this is undisputable. 

As expected, Alexander Lukashenko was re-elected president of Belarus by an overwhelming majority. 

That “victory” is indeed contentious. Lukashenko has ruled authoritatively for 30 years, while his critics have been imprisoned, killed or persecuted. The most illustrative example of this was seen on 23 May 2021, when Belarus forced a passenger plane flying over it on the Athens-Vilnius route to land in Minsk, which was falsely justified as a “bomb threat”, with the aim of arresting opposition activist Roman Protasevich, who was on that flight. 

Lukashenko has amended the constitution in order to rule indefinitely and is suspected of murders such as that of former Interior Minister Yury Zacharanka, politician Viktor Hanchar, businessman Anatoly Krasovsky, and journalists Dzmitry Zavadsky and Aleh Byabenin. Behind many of these murders is allegedly the commander of the special police, Dmitri Pavlichenko. Belarus is one of the countries with the highest number of journalists in prison, and it censors both culture and art. 

Five presidential candidates are registered with the Central Election Commission of Belarus, the post reads. 

Those rival candidates were just for show. Among them, the communist Sergei Syrankov, plays the lead role and is a subordinate of Lukashenko, as is Alyeh Haydukyevich, a former lieutenant colonel of Lukashenko’s repressive police and a candidate of the so-called “Liberal-democratic” party, which is neither liberal nor democratic. Another candidate was Aleksandr Hižnjak, another subordinate of Lukashenko, while only Hanna Kanapatskaya resembled an oppositionist, but some suspect her, because she is soft towards the regime and argues more with other oppositionists than with him (sources: here and here). 

THE OSCE, although invited, did not send its observers, the post said. 

That’s not quite true. On January 9, 2025, OSCE complained that they had not received an invitation, and after 18 days the Belarusians reported that they had sent it. The OSCE then rejected the invitation on the grounds that it was overdue, and with this behavior Belarus violated its obligations as an OSCE member. 

The elections were observed by 44,000 observers from the country and 500 from abroad, the post said. 

Most of the foreign observers were from countries that have good relations with Lukashenko such as Iran, Myanmar or Zimbabwe, but mainly from the former USSR, i.e. from the Commonwealth of Independent States, of which Belarus itself is a member, as well as Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. None of those countries are the benchmark for democracy, so the rating of those election observers is irrelevant. From the Balkans, Dragan Stanojevic was there, who is the head of the Serbian branch of the organization “Another Ukraine,” of the pro-Russian collaborator from that country, Viktor Medvedchuk. 

Belarus and Russia also invite pro-Russian propagandists from the West to play the role of “Western experts” who “positively assess” the elections. Such was Heinz Wehmeyer of the German-Russian society of Wittenberg, Germany, whom Lukashenko even distinguished for his work. 

The question is whether the “collective West”, especially the EU countries, will recognize the election and Lukashenko’s victory, or as they did four years ago, claim that the elections were unfair, irregular and rigged just because their candidate did not win and will organize colorful, orange, color “revolutions” and whatnot, the post claims. 

Fake elections under a repressive regime are not elections, so the negative reaction of the West was not out of place. Lukashenko’s 2020 rival candidate was to be Syarhey Tsikhanouski, but he was arrested. His wife Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya ran in his place, but Lukashenko fraudulently stole her victory. This provoked mass protests among Belarusian citizens, in which they were arrested and subjected to torture, some of them even lost their lives, such as Alexander Taraikovsky, Raman Bandarenka,and Vitold Ashurak.

Tsikhanouskaya fled to Lithuania, which recognized her as the legitimate leader of Belarus, which Lukashenko disputed. The EU also adopted this stance. Lukashenko started a hybrid war against Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland by issuing visas to Middle Eastern migrants and letting them enter those countries illegally, causing incidents and destabilization. 

Lukashenko is not a Belarusian patriot 

A common narrative is that Lukashenko is some kind of patriot, so here is one comment sourced from social networks, which comments on his election “victory:” 

Lukashenko, а Belarusian patriot, and an example of how to protect and guard the homeland and the people from various foreign western schemers 

Lukashenko is not a patriot. He has turned Belarus into a Russian province and a Russian nuclear base, as well as a springboard for Russian aggression against Ukraine. He speaks only Russian, not Belarusian, which he suppresses and even insults. He only referred to the Belarusian language and patriotism when relations with Moscow were strained (when he was worried that Russia would take over Belarus like it did with Crimea and Donbas or that it would overthrow him from power). 

Belarus was under the yoke of the Russian tsars, who assimilated it and renamed it the Northwestern Krai. After the collapse of the Russian Empire, the independent Belarusian People’s Republic emerged in 1918, but it was attacked by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin‘s Soviet Russia, which created Soviet Belarus and incorporated it into the USSR. The government of the Belarusian People’s Republic found itself in exile, where it still operates today, while Lukashenko downplays that history, propagating nostalgia for the USSR. 

The Belarusian language in the USSR was recognized, but it was perfidiously suppressed by Russian, so millions of Belarusians do not speak Belarusian, including Lukashenko. In Belarusian he is called Aliaksandr Lukashenka, while Belarus was part of the medieval East Slavic state of Kievan Rus. The name Rus came from the Swedish Vikings of the commander Rurik, who were the founders of that state. The Ukrainians, the Rusyns, and the Russians have a connection to it, but Russia wants to monopolize that history and territory, which is not justified. For example, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Slavonia all have a connection with the Old Slavs, so it’s not possible for just one of them to monopolize it. 

Stability as an argument 

Among pro-Russian propagandists there are those who do not deny that Lukashenko rules authoritatively, but they relativize that it contributes to the political stability of Belarus. In this regard, a headline from the Serbian site Nulta Tachka [Zero Point] says (in translation): 

Better a dictatorship in Belarus than democracy in Ukraine 

It allegedly has a positive effect on the economy, as one post in Macedonian says:  

From a flat economy, it became the country with the lowest unemployment rate (2%) and the highest percentage of middle-class citizens. 

Indeed, Belarus did not go through such tremors as Ukraine did, while Lukashenko did not break with the Soviet economy and state-owned factories, which, according to some, contributed to Belarus not suffering so much from the transition. However, the question is what is the truth and what is the boasting of the Belarusian regime. 

The USSR punished those able-bodied citizens, who did not work, as social parasites (Russian: tunayadtsy). That is what Belarus is doing now, in a milder manner. That is why we don’t know whether this forced some Belarusians to take any kind of job, even if it is poorly paid and unsuitable, and if that perhaps contributed to the low unemployment rate (if it really is low). 

Belarus has some successes (it makes money from refining Russian oil; it produces tractors, trucks, buses, trains, and military equipment; it has agriculture, food, and chemical industries; as well as free health care and education), but it is not a communist utopia, as propagandists boast. Its standard of living is no higher than that of post-Soviet or post-communist Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland. They don’t have their own Lukashenko, and yet they enjoy a better and freer life.