MINSK, (Reuters) – Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko won a fifth term in office by a landslide yesterday in an election that could see an easing of relations with the West and raise questions about his ties to Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Lukashenko’s re-election five years ago led to mass protests and the imprisonment of leading opposition figures, but support for his 20-year-old regime has risen since he cast himself as a guarantor of stability in the face of an economic crisis and a pro-Russian separatist conflict in neighbouring Ukraine.
The West has long ostracised Lukashenko’s Belarus, described in 2005 by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as “Europe’s last dictatorship”, over its human rights record and clamp-down on political dissent. It has imposed economic sanctions on some Belarussian officials and companies.
Nevertheless, his criticism of Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula last year, his hosting of Ukraine peace talks and his pardoning of the six opposition leaders in August suggest he is seeking to improve his image in the West, observers say.
