The Central Election Committee stated on Monday that Lukashenko won 86.8% of the vote and that turnout was almost 87%.

There were four other names on the ballot – carefully chosen to present no challenge to the current leadership – but no credible contenders were allowed to take part in the election, as all opposition figures are either in jail or in exile abroad.

No independent observers monitored the vote, either.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said the election had been a blatant affront to democracy, while German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock posted on X that “the people of Belarus had no choice”.

Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said President Vladimir Putin – who has ruled Russia since 2000 – congratulated his close ally Lukashenko for his “solid victory”.

Peskov said Moscow believed that the Belarusian election was an “absolutely legitimate, well organised, transparent election” and slammed “the voices that sound from the West”.

The leaders of China, Venezuela and Pakistan also offered their congratulations to Lukashenko.

Exiled Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya dismissed the election as “yet another political farce”.

She claimed victory in the 2020 election, in which she stood in placed of her jailed husband.

January 2025 in Belarus is not one of them.

Drive around Minsk and you’ll see no big billboards promoting the portraits of candidates.

There is little campaigning.

The grey skies and sleet of a Belarusian winter add to an overriding sense of inactivity.

And inevitability.

The outcome of the 2025 presidential election is not in doubt. Alexander Lukashenko, once dubbed “Europe’s last dictator,” who has ruled Belarus with an iron fist for more than 30 years, will be declared the winner and secure a seventh term in office.

His supporters call it an exercise in “Belarusian democracy”. His opponents reject the process as “a farce”.

Even Mr Lukashenko himself claims to lack interest in the process.

“I’m not following the election campaign. I’ve got no time,” the Belarusian leader told workers at the Minsk Automobile Plant this week.

The workers presented him with a gift: an axe for chopping wood.

“I’ll try it out before the election,” promised Mr Lukashenko, to rapturous applause.

Four-and-a-half years ago, at a different enterprise, the leader of Belarus received a much cooler reception.

One week after the 2020 presidential election, Alexander Lukashenko visited the Minsk Wheels Tractor Plant. Leaked video showed him being jeered and heckled by workers. They shouted ‘”Go away! Go away!”.

In 2020 the official election result – of 80% for Mr Lukashenko – had sparked anger and huge protests across the country. Belarusians poured onto the streets to accuse their leader of stealing their votes and the election.

In the brutal police crackdown that followed, thousands of anti-government protesters and critics were arrested. Eventually the wave of repression extinguished the protests and, with help from Russia, Mr Lukashenko clung to power.

The UK, the European Union and the United States refuse to recognise him as the legitimate president of Belarus.

Alexander Lukashenko’s staunchest opponents (and potential rivals) are either in prison or have been forced into exile.

That is why this week the European Parliament passed a resolution calling on the EU to reject the upcoming presidential election as “a sham” and pointing out that the election campaign has been taking place “in an environment of severe repression which fails to meet even the minimum standards for democratic elections”.

I remember interviewing Alexander Lukashenko last October, on the day the date of the presidential election was announced.

“How can these elections be free and democratic if the leaders of the opposition are in prison or abroad?” I asked.

“Do you actually know who the leaders of the opposition are?” Mr Lukashenko hit back.

“An opposition is a group of people who should serve the interests, at the very least, of a small number of people in the country. Where are these leaders you speak of? Wake up!”

Alexander Lukashenko is not the sole candidate. There are four others. But they seem more like spoilers, than serious challengers.

I drive four hours from Minsk to meet one of them. Sergei Syrankov is the leader of the Communist Party of Belarus. In the town of Vitebsk I sit in on one of his campaign events. In a large hall Mr Syrankov addresses a small audience, flanked by his party’s emblem, the hammer and sickle.

His campaign slogan is unusual to say the least: “Not instead of, but together with Lukashenko!”

He is a presidential candidate who openly backs his opponent.

“There is no alternative to Alexander Lukashenko as the leader of our country,” Mr Syrankov tells me. “So, we are taking part in the election with the president’s team.”

“Why do you think there is no alternative?” I ask.

“Because Lukashenko is a man of the people, a man of the soil, who has done everything to make sure we don’t have the kind of chaos they have in Ukraine.”

“You’re fighting for power yourself, but you support another candidate. That is…unusual,” I suggest.

“I am certain that Alexander Lukashenko will win a thumping victory. But even if he wins and I don’t, the Communists will be the winners,” responds Mr Syrankov.

“The main Communist in our country is our head of state. Lukashenko still has his old membership card from the days of the Soviet Communist Party.”

“It’s a sham,” the exiled opposition leader says. “This is a military-style operation; a performance staged by the regime to hold on to power.”

For three decades, the country has been led by an increasingly authoritarian Alexander Lukashenko, now firmly backed by Vladimir Putin who makes use of his neighbour in his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

This Sunday, Belarusians will see Lukashenko’s name on the ballot paper once again, with four other names chosen carefully to be no challenge.

No independent observers are allowed.

The tight controls have been put in place because last time Belarusians voted for a president, the country was swept by giant protests.

In 2020, Alexander Lukashenko allowed Svetlana Tikhanovskaya to run against him, thinking that a political novice – and a woman – would make no impact.

It was a massive miscalculation.

Tikhanovskaya, who decided to stand in place of her husband after Lukashenko put him in jail, claimed victory.

When Lukashenko was awarded 80% of the vote, crowds took to the streets in the biggest ever threat to his rule. The protests were ultimately crushed by riot police with mass arrests and brute force.

The European Union then refused to recognise Lukashenko’s legitimacy as president.

Today, all the key opposition figures from that period are in prison or have fled abroad, like Tikhanovskaya. Former protesters still in Belarus have been scared into silence.

So the opposition leader is not urging them to take to the streets again on Sunday.

“We call on Belarusians to reject this sham and on the international community to reject the result,” she tells the BBC. “But I say to Belarusians, you have to keep safe until the real moment of possibility.

“Because people live in constant fear, and the regime is now intensifying the repression.”

You feel that fear straight away when you speak to Belarusians.

Many don’t want to talk publicly about politics at all. Others ask you to change their names, then choose their words carefully.

Some still inside Belarus chat only via encrypted messages which they delete immediately.

All say open political activism in the country has been extinguished.

Bysol, a non-profit organisation which helps evacuate those in danger, reports a surge in applications to around 30 or 40 requests a month.

Since 2020, the group has evacuated more than 1,500 people.

It also supports former political prisoners trying to rebuild life in exile after their release.

For Yana Zhuravleva, a vet, that’s been tough.

Prior to 2020 she was devoted to her work and not particularly politically active. But that summer she joined the giant crowds, hopeful of change.

She was later sentenced to three years for a “gross violation of public order”.

“We would get punished for everything,” she recalls of her time in prison.

She calculates that about 1 in 10 of the women were there because of the protests. Like them, Yana was added to the register of those “inclined to extremism and destructive activity”.

“You can’t go to the sports hall, your only letters are from relatives and you get fewer visiting rights. If you complain you always hear the same response: remember what you’re here for,” she tells me from Poland, where she moved after her recent release.

Yana admits it took “titanic” strength not to slide into deep depression.

“In prison, I barely cried. But when I was out, I suddenly wanted to sob all the time, and didn’t know why.”

Several people I contacted have mentioned seeking psychological help after being interrogated, threatened or imprisoned.

They describe a security service that hunts down anyone with the loosest link to the opposition, then demands names from all those it detains.

The pressure has never let up.

One woman inside Belarus, who used to monitor human rights, tells me she’s had to stop attending court hearings because the authorities spotted her.

If they could prove any link to the banned human rights organisation Viasna, she could be charged as an “extremist”.

“I can do some specific acts of support, but I have to be careful,” she told me anonymously.

“You have a very strong sense of helplessness when you see all this injustice.”

Viasna currently lists 1,256 political prisoners in Belarus. Dozens were given amnesties recently, but they were soon replaced.

For those who do escape the pressure-cooker of Belarus, there is the added struggle of knowing they may not return for a long time.

That’s why Natalia, not her real name, decided to stay in Belarus even after she was detained twice for participating in the protests.

“You’re very vulnerable once you’re on the list of the ‘repressed’,” she explains.

“You can’t get work because you are on the police data base and the authorities always have an eye on you.”

For Natalia that meant being arrested again, initially for walking her dog without a lead.

“They claimed I’d been aggressive and cursed loudly and waved my arms,” she remembers, of her detention in 2023. She was held for ten days with up to 14 people in a cell for two, a light on constantly.

For over a week, she slept on the wooden floor.

“It really shook my sense of security, I became much more anxious,” Natalia confides.

She’s abroad for now and plans to return soon, to her cats. But her neighbours say a police officer just visited her house, checking up on all potential protesters ahead of Sunday’s vote.

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya believes the ongoing repression shows that Lukashenko and his allies are afraid.

“The trauma of 2020 is still alive and he has to eliminate any possibility of uprising,” the opposition leader argues.

“He knows the Belarusians didn’t accept or forgive him, and they still want change.”

But she admits there’s little sign of that in the short-term.

For a time after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Belarusians hoped their neighbours might succeed in defeating Putin with Western help, and that Lukashenko would be toppled next.

Some headed for the frontline themselves, choosing force after their peaceful protests had failed.

But Ukraine’s military is now struggling to hold ground and President Donald Trump is pushing for peace talks.

“The democratic world can’t make concessions to Putin,” Tikhanovskaya argues, describing Lukashenko as equally dangerous to the world.

He let Russia launch missiles at Ukraine from Belarus and send its tanks through his territory.

He’s also allowed the free flow of migrants to the Polish border and into the EU.

“He allows Putin to deploy nuclear weapons and his army in Belarus, and it’s a very short path to Poland and Lithuania,” Tikhanovskaya points out.

“He and Putin are a pair, and they support other dictators. He’s part of this chain of evil.”

There is little doubt that Sunday’s reinstatement of Alexander Lukashenko will go according to his plan.

“Those people are very capable,” explains Yana, the former political prisoner.

“They really did crush the potential for protest.”

She’s now trying to return to her profession as a vet, but in Poland, and to recover from three tough years behind bars.

Those I spoke to now talk of Lukashenko retiring, or eventually dying, as their greatest hope of seeing democracy.

In the meantime, many are switching focus: there’s been a surge of interest in reviving the Belarusian culture and language, an opposition cause. It’s the most many dare do in such circumstances.

“No-one says it openly, but we feel like there are no prospects. There’s depression,” Natalia admits.

But there are no obvious regrets, even so.

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya’s own life has changed dramatically since she was thrust into politics.

Cut-off from her country, her husband is also a political prisoner – kept in total isolation for almost two years.

The opposition leader insists she still “truly believes” in change.

“2020 was a huge shift in mentality in Belarus. I don’t know how long it will take, but that shift will not disappear.”

Arrested in 2020 as he tried to run for president against authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko, Babaryko was then held incommunicado behind bars as extra punishment.

His political team describe the time with no contact or information about him at all as “torturous”.

In a short video just released, Babaryko is filmed sending greetings to his family. There are also three photographs, including one that shows him writing a letter, apparently also to relatives. It’s not clear exactly when the pictures were taken.

Dressed in black prison overalls, the former banker has lost a considerable amount of weight since his detention.

Other high-profile political prisoners have also been held incommunicado in Belarus, including Maria Kolesnikova, who was part of Babaryko’s 2020 presidential campaign team until his arrest.

She then became one of the leaders of the mass protests that erupted after the election, which the EU said had been falsified to keep Lukashenko in office.

Last November, similar images were suddenly released of Kolesnikova, taken in prison when her father was allowed his first visit in more than a year-and-a-half. There has been no news of her since.

In both cases, the photos and videos were published by Roman Protasevich, co-founder of the Telegram channel Nexta that was widely followed during the 2020 mass protests.

In 2021, he was arrested after his Ryanair flight was diverted mid-air to Belarus and forced to land following a fake bomb threat.

The former activist was later released from prison after making a public apology, and now co-operates with the authorities.

In a short video that he posted alongside the photographs of Viktor Babaryko, he said the prisoner had “looked well”, claimed he was cheerful and that the two had chatted, joked and “even laughed” together. Babaryko doesn’t get to comment for himself.

The pictures of the former presidential contender have emerged shortly before the next election in Belarus, on 26 January. This time, no genuine opposition candidates at all have been allowed to take part.

There have been reports that well-known political prisoners are under pressure to request an official pardon from Lukashenko ahead of the vote, so that he might release them and look merciful.

It’s also possible the images of Viktor Babaryko in prison are meant to remind Belarusians of the immense risk of open opposition.

A few dozen less prominent figures have been released in recent months, but others have swiftly been arrested to replace them.

The human rights group Viasna currently calculates that there are 1,258 political prisoners in the country.

Among the high-profile names still not seen or heard of for many months are Sergei Tikhanovsky, the political activist arrested in 2020 whose wife Svetlana went on to run in the election in his place.

Now leader of the opposition, forced into exile, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya told the BBC this week that the upcoming presidential vote was a “sham” and a “performance” staged by Alexander Lukashenko in order to extend his grip on power.