Alexander Lukashenko has extended his 31-year rule by winning a controversial seventh term in Belarus. Amid accusations of election rigging, political repression, and growing reliance on Russia, the autocratic leader’s grip on power remains firm.

Belarusians are voting in a closely-managed presidential election that is all but certain to extend the one-man rule of Alexander Lukashenko, in power since 1994 and Europe’s longest-serving leader.

Alexander Lukashenko wins Belarus' election by a landslide, garnering nearly 87 per cent of the vote Belarus strongman Alexander Lukashenko, in power since 1994, won a seventh consecutive term in office on Sunday in an election denounced by the European Union and the exiled opposition.

Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, who has been in power for over 30 years, is poised to extend his rule in an election that concludes Sunday and that the opposition dismisses as a farce.

President Donald Trump's new Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that a U.S. citizen imprisoned in Belarus under Joe Biden has since been released.

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union rejected the election in Belarus on Sunday as illegitimate and threatened new sanctions. Belarus held an orchestrated vote virtually guaranteed to give 70-year-old autocratic President Alexander Lukashenko yet another term on top of his three decades in power.

President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, a close ally of Russia’s leader, Vladimir V. Putin, has been making signs of reaching out to the West. He is all but certain to win an election on Sunday.

Belarusians will go to the polls for “presidential elections,” an event seen by many as a “sham,” a “no-choice election” (bezvybory), and little more than a ritual for Aliaksandr Lukashenka, who has been president of Belarus for more than three decades.

Belarus is on the brink of extending the 30-year rule of its authoritarian leader, President Alexander Lukashenko, who is poised to secure a seventh term in a presidential election slated for January 2025.

Europe’s longest-serving leader won re-election in a contest widely believe to have been rigged. The result cements the power of a leader whose country is considered Russia’s staunchest ally.

Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko extended his 31-year rule with a massive win in a presidential election that Western governments have rejected as a sham, according to preliminary results on Monday.