The presidential election in Belarus, a country ruled since 1994 by Alexander Lukashenko, one of Russia’s main allies, will be held on January 26, 2025, the Electoral Commission announced.

“The election of the president of the Republic of Belarus will take place on January 26, 2025The Commission said in a post on the Telegram platform.

THE 70-year-old Lukashenko immediately confirmed that he will seek a seventh consecutive term. “I will go to the elections, the date is good“, he told a Russian journalist.

The head of the exiled opposition Svetlana Tikhanovskaya reacted through the X platform commenting that it is a “virtual” election, “without a real electoral process”, which “conducted in a climate of terror».

“No alternate candidates, nor observers will be allowed. We call on Belarusians and the international community to reject this farce“, he added.

The previous election, in 2020, which the opposition denounced as rigged, led to unprecedented protests against Lukashenko. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Minsk and other cities but this movement was violently suppressed by the authorities. Since then, the relentless repression has continued and hundreds of thousands of people have fled abroad, mainly to neighboring Poland.

According to the human rights non-governmental organization Viasna, 1,300 people are “unjustly detained” in Belarus because they expressed opposition to the regime or for other political reasons. Maria Kolesnikova, a leader of the 2020 mobilization, was sentenced to 11 years in prison and is facing health problems in prison. Her relatives have not heard from her since February 2023.

Tikhanovskaya went abroad. She says she has no information about her husband, Sergei Tikhanovsky, Lukashenko’s political opponent, who is also in prison.