The European Union is poised to ease sanctions on Belarusian president Aleksandar Lukashenko and his allies despite criticism of his re-election by international observers and condemnation from opponents who called Sunday's vote a sham.
Opposition leaders mocked official results that gave 83.5 per cent of votes to Mr Lukashenko on a turnout of more than 85 per cent – a typically crushing victory for the former state farm boss who has ruled Belarus since 1994.
“The election commissions made up the results as they wished,” said long-time opposition politician Anatoly Lebedko. “I’m amazed by the scale. They made up a staggering turnout, with half-empty polling stations.”
Another prominent opposition figure, Vladimir Neklyaev, said: "We do not consider the spectacle performed by the Belarusian authorities to be an election and do not recognise it."
Western election monitors said the atmosphere around the vote was less tense than in previous years, and welcomed Mr Lukashenko’s decision to free several leading opponents from jail this summer.
But Kent Harstedt, leader of a mission from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), said "the hope that this gave us for the broader electoral process was largely unfulfilled . . . It is clear that Belarus still has a long way to go towards fulfilling its democratic commitments. We hope that the Belarusian government will have the political will to engage in a thorough reform process, which we are ready to support."
Despite Mr Lukashenko’s use of all levers at his regime’s disposal to sideline critics, the EU is keen to improve ties with him in its bid to weaken Russia’s grip on the country of 9.5 million people.
“The support for Lukashenko does not come as a surprise, nor does the level of the support,” Germany’s foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said on Monday. “As far as we could observe from Berlin, there has also not been the level of repression around the time of the elections that we have seen in the past,” he said, adding that the EU would consider “under what conditions, what timetables sanctions against Belarus can be changed or suspended”.
A decision is due by the end of October, and EU diplomats have suggested that the travel bans and asset freezes on Mr Lukashenko (61) and some 150 allies will initially be suspended for several months.
Belarus is economically dependent on Russia, but its people have been alarmed by their huge neighbour's annexation of Crimea and military, financial and diplomatic support for a separatist insurgency that has devastated eastern Ukraine.
Mr Lukashenko also appears reluctant to bow to Russia's wish to establish an airbase in the country, which borders Ukraine and EU- and Nato-member Poland, and Brussels seems to see this as an opportunity to woo Belarus away from Moscow.
Russian president Vladimir Putin congratulated Mr Lukashenko on a "convincing victory that showed his great political authority and the trust shown in him by the population".
Critics of Mr Lukashenko note that over two decades of manoeuvring he has always, when push came to shove, chosen to side with Moscow and crush opponents rather than move towards the EU and foster democratic reforms.
Mikola Statkevich, a veteran opposition leader released from jail this summer, said of the EU’s latest advances towards Mr Lukashenko: “If they are together with this murderer, this criminal, then democracy is just words.”
