Official exit poll: Lukashenko wins the elections with 87% of the votes.

The Central Election Commission is expected to announce the official preliminary results of the elections on Monday night.

The 70-year-old authoritarian leader of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, is re-elected for a seventh presidential term. He has been in power since 1994. The mass and prolonged protests following the 2020 elections, along with ongoing repressions, leave no doubt among anyone in the country or beyond that the CEC will declare him the winner. The Belarusian opposition, whose leaders are either abroad or imprisoned in Belarus, does not recognize the legitimacy of the voting.

In addition to Lukashenko, four other candidates are mentioned on the ballots for the presidency: Oleg Gaidukevich — chairman of the Belarusian LDPR, Sergey Syrankov — first secretary of the Central Committee of the Belarusian Communist Party, Alexander Khizhnyak — chairman of the Belarusian Labor and Justice Party, and former National Assembly deputy Anna Kanopatskaya.

All of them, except Kanopatskaya, are loyal to Lukashenko's policies. Kanopatskaya calls herself "the only opposition candidate," but independent observers describe her as a spoiler. She previously ran in the 2020 elections and received less than 2% of the votes.

According to exit polls, none of the candidates, except Lukashenko, received more than 3%. About 5% reportedly voted against all candidates.

According to the CEC, voter turnout exceeded 85%. This time, polling stations were not opened abroad. There were no official observers from the OSCE or Western countries at the elections. Lukashenko stated that the authorities invited OSCE observers to the country, but they refused to come. The organization explained that the invitation was sent only 10 days before the voting, making it impossible to organize observation.

According to official data, Vladimir Putin received 87.28% of the votes in the Russian presidential elections with a turnout of nearly 78%. Thus, if the exit poll data is confirmed, Lukashenko will receive slightly more votes (in relative terms) than Putin. In 2020, according to official figures, which the opposition considers a product of falsifications, Lukashenko received around 80%.

In the opinion of the European Union and many Western countries, Alexander Lukashenko lost his legitimacy after the 2020 elections, which were accompanied by massive falsifications and severe suppression of opposition protests. This was confirmed by the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell. On Saturday, she wrote on social media platform X: "Lukashenko has clung to power for 30 years. Tomorrow he will once again put forward his candidacy in yet another sham election. This is a blatant insult to democracy."

On Sunday, Borrell released a statement regarding the elections in Belarus, noting that there is no trust in the election results, which are described as "fake, unfree, and unfair." The statement emphasizes that the EU will continue to impose sanctions against the Belarusian authorities while supporting civil society and democratic forces of Belarus in exile.

Hungary previously blocked the publication of a similar statement on behalf of the European Union. This was reported by the Belarusian service of Radio Free Europe, citing its sources.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio reported on Sunday that the Belarusian authorities had released American Anastasia Nyufer, who had been detained earlier. It had not been previously reported that she had been detained; her name was not on the lists of political prisoners or Americans arrested abroad. It is also unclear what charges the Belarusian authorities brought against her. The U.S. has not yet officially commented on the Belarusian presidential elections.

Opponents of Alexander Lukashenko, forced into exile, and the Belarusian diaspora organized protests abroad on January 26 — in Warsaw, Vilnius, Prague, Stockholm, and other cities. In Warsaw, in particular, with the participation of opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, a forum titled "Belarusians Deserve Better" took place. In Kyiv, several dozen people participated in a march to honor Belarusians who died for Ukraine. A report on the protests in Vilnius and Prague is published by "Current Time."