Aleksandr Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, will run again in the presidential elections in 2025. This was evident from reports on Sunday from the Belarusian sstate news agency BelTA. Lukashenko has been in power since 1994 and wants to add another term.
Elections for a new parliament will take place in Belarus on Sunday, and the four parties that can be voted on are only pro-Lukashenko. The 69-year-old president received a large majority of votes in the last presidential elections in 2020. That outcome sparked protests in the country, with some 35,000 people arrested. According to, among others the European Council there would have been election fraud: repression and intimidation of political opponents enable Lukashenko to consolidate his power.
The president has close ties with Russia and has been linked to the illegal deportation of children from occupied Ukrainian territories. In January, he signed a law guaranteeing him lifelong immunity from criminal prosecution. Opposition leaders who have fled abroad will also not be allowed to participate in future presidential elections under the new law. Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the main opposition leader, fled to Lithuania in 2021. Last year she was sentenced to fifteen years in prison in Belarus.
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