Even before it was held, the Belarusian election's result was never in doubt. As predicted, the country's authoritarian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, 70, officially won a seventh term in office in the presidential election on Sunday, January 26, with 87.6% of the vote, according to an official exit poll. The other four candidates had all publicly supported the regime, while real political opponents are in prison or exile.

The European Union denounced a "sham election" that was "neither free, nor fair," and threatened further sanctions. Speaking from Warsaw, Poland, the Belarusian democratic opposition leader in exile, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, also described the election as a "farce." The day before, her team had condemned the regime's dissemination of a fake video, generated by artificial intelligence, in which Tsikhanouskaya said she was stepping down from her position as opposition leader in exile. She claimed it was a "fake," and then called for political prisoners to be released and free elections held.

Belarusians living abroad, who have been estimated at one million people, were not allowed to vote. "They are people who have fled repression, imprisonment and the economic crisis," said Franak Viačorka, a political scientist and Tsikhanouskaya's right-hand man. "Excluding them from the vote is a tactic to further delegitimize the democratic movement and deny representation to those who oppose Lukashenko."

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