When Aleksandr G. Lukashenko last ran for president of Belarus, the former Soviet republic he has led since 1994, he faced an unusual phenomenon: rival candidates who actually tried to win. His eventual victory in that election, in 2020, widely regarded as fraudulent, was met with nationwide protests, a subsequent brutal crackdown supported by Russia and then Western penalties.
This time, in a presidential election set for Sunday, Mr. Lukashenko’s all-but-certain victory — his seventh in a row — is likely to be smoother. He has allowed four other, state-approved candidates to run, but they compete only in showering praise on him. Candidates who could pose a threat to his rule have all been jailed or forced into exile. He controls the media and all levers of power in his country.
“There is no genuine choice — all we have is this farcical facade of the candidates who all come from pro-government parties,” said Katia Glod, a nonresident fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington who is originally from Belarus.
“It is like in Russia now: There are no candidates who can represent an alternative view,” she said.
Mr. Lukashenko is so confident of winning another term that he has eschewed campaigning, saying he was too busy with tasks like testing a new Belarusian-made ax. State media on Thursday showed him chopping wood.
Two decades after the United States declared Belarus “the last remaining true dictatorship in the heart of Europe,” Mr. Lukashenko is determined to put the 2020 election behind him and prove to his country — and to Russia — that his grip is firm.
His continued rule will do little to shift the dynamics of a region disrupted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Belarus was a staging ground for Moscow’s attack, and Mr. Lukashenko remains an ardent ally of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
But Mr. Lukashenko has also shown signs of reaching out to the West by issuing a wave of presidential pardons for people jailed during the 2020 protests, apparently in a bid to reduce the sanctions that have punished his country for years.
None of the leaders of the opposition in 2020 have been freed, however, and Mr. Lukashenko has locked up large numbers of opposition sympathizers before Sunday’s election.
So it is unclear where Mr. Lukashenko’s attempt to maneuver between East and West, a game he has played ruthlessly in the past, will leave Belarus.
Mr. Lukashenko remains an important ally of Russia; he said recently that Belarus had Russian nuclear weapons on its soil and would host what Moscow has called its new hypersonic ballistic missile if it is deployed. But he also does not want to be drawn further into the war in Ukraine and has pushed back against requests from Russia to send troops.
A relaxation of Western penalties would lift the economy. Belarus has been battered by the sanctions, particularly those against potash, a fertilizer ingredient that is one of the pillars of the economy.
But so far, there has been no indication from Washington or Brussels that the strategy of releasing some prisoners is working. Some analysts say he will be closely watching for the West’s response to the elections.
“If the regime sees that the West is taking a more or less neutral stance on the election, maybe it will decide to release some high-profile prisoners to bring tensions with the West one notch down,” Ms. Glod said. “If not, maybe they will stop altogether.”
None of Mr. Lukashenko’s opponents in the election have even pretended that the outcome is a question.
Wrapping up a TV debate with three other candidates (Mr. Lukashenko did not participate), the Communist Party candidate Sergei Syrankov said Monday that he wanted to be “honest,” and that the only point of the vote was to see who came in second. “Everyone in this studio knows that Aleksandr Lukashenko is going to win,” he said.
The electoral landscape this year is vastly different from the political awakening that took place in 2020, when hundreds of thousands of people turned out to support candidates speaking out against Mr. Lukashenko.
A former boss of a collective farm in Soviet times, Mr. Lukashenko won his first presidential election, a relatively fair contest, in 1994 as an anti-establishment candidate promising to root out corruption and give a voice to ordinary people.
Six elections since have been widely dismissed as shams that concealed rising discontent. Before the 2020 election, even supporters began to wonder whether it might be time for a change when Mr. Lukashenko responded to the Covid-19 pandemic by telling people to protect their health by riding tractors, drinking vodka and taking saunas.
He jailed the two main presidential hopefuls in 2020 — Viktor Babariko and Sergei Tikhanovsky. Mr. Tikhanovsky’s wife, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, a political novice, emerged as an accidental leader of the opposition.
Ms. Tikhanovskaya galvanized opponents to Mr. Lukashenko with a highly popular campaign. But the president’s party machine orchestrated widely documented fraud on election night, which led to months of protests.
Mr. Lukashenko eventually cracked down, throwing thousands of opposition supporters into jail. All independent media outlets were shut down, their editors and reporters jailed or pushed into exile. Opposition figures who did not flee were imprisoned.
Five years later, those opposition leaders in exile are telling Belarusians to ignore the election or to vote for “none of the above.”
“We’re calling on Belarusians to show their opposition to the regime in any form: refuse to cooperate with the regime, ignore the elections — and voting for ‘none of the above’ is also a way of protest,” Ms. Tikhanovskaya, who is based in Lithuania, said in emailed comments.
“This is a farce, not an election,” she said. “There is no room and there can’t be any room for transparency, fair procedures or opposition candidates there.”
As in previous elections, Mr. Lukashenko has presented himself as the only safeguard against chaos and strife. He said recently that he “does not cling to power” and that he would “do my best to hand over power to a new generation.”
But he did not indicate he would step down any time soon, and has sent the message that he is ready to crack down again if needed.
Belarusian TV recently broadcast slickly produced footage of riot police in full gear tackling crowds making trouble outside a mock polling station.
Mr. Lukashenko has also banned remote voting, disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of Belarusians abroad.
Kiryl Kalbasnikau, 33, a theater technician who fled the country in 2021, said by phone from London that he “would love to go and vote for ‘none of the above’” if he could.
Like many Belarusian exiles, Mr. Kalbasnikau, who until recently belonged to the banned Free Belarus Theater, once thought the regime was on its last legs. Now, he said, he may be looking at 10 more years of rule by Mr. Lukashenko — and of his own exile.
“It would be a miracle to see my mom and two brothers — I miss them so much,” said Mr. Kalbasnikau, who has not seen them for nearly four years.
Many Belarusians say that the pardons Mr. Lukashenko has been issuing are at least one bright spot.
But Ms. Tikhanovskaya, whose husband has been in jail in Belarus for over four years, has no trust in Mr. Lukashenko’s good will.
“Repressions are likely to go on after Jan. 26: Lukashenko knows he cannot stay in power unless he keeps people in fear,” she said, dismissing the pardons as “manipulation, not a policy change.”
Andrew Higgins contributed reporting.
