Five things to know about Belarus under Lukashenko's authoritarian rule

Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - Belarusian President and presidential candidate Alexander Lukashenko casts his ballot yesterday. — AFP pic

MINSK, Jan 27 — Belarus is held a presidential election yesterday that will certainly secure another five-year mandate for Alexander Lukashenko, who has been in power for over three decades and crushed all opposition.

Here are five things to know about the authoritarian former Soviet republic, a Kremlin ally with a population of nine million people.

Kremlin subject

Lukashenko’s last re-election in August 2020 with an official tally of more than 80 percent support was followed by unprecedented peaceful mass protests that rocked the government but were eventually crushed.

Several people were killed and thousands arrested.

Heavy prison sentences were handed out to government critics. Hundreds of thousands of Belarusians fled.

Targeted by Western sanctions, Lukashenko abandoned a long-standing balancing act between Moscow and the West and turned to the Kremlin for help.

In February 2022, Belarus allowed Russian troops to use its territory to invade Ukraine even though the Belarusian army did not take part.

Moscow has since stationed tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus—a threat against Kyiv but also against Belarus’s NATO-member neighbours Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.

Ravaged by WWII and Chernobyl

Belarus paid the heaviest price of all the Soviet republics in World War II, which killed a total of 27 million Soviet citizens.

Belarus was first in line as Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, losing 2.3 million inhabitants—around a quarter of the population.

In April 1986, tragedy struck again when the Chernobyl nuclear power station melted down in neighbouring Ukraine, with most of the fallout hitting Belarus.

Around 23 percent of its territory was contaminated, including 1.8 million hectares of farmland.

An exclusion zone of 1,700 square kilometres (over 650 square miles) was created—most of it in Belarus—and around 330,000 people were evacuated.

Potatoes and tractors

The Belarusian economy is still largely state-owned—a Soviet legacy that Lukashenko, a former collective farm boss, has preserved.

Output from the country’s farms, particularly dairy, carrots and potatoes, is still prized in the rest of the former Soviet Union.

Lukashenko likes to make public appearances on farms.

In 2016, US actor Steven Seagal joined him on a visit and took a bite from a carrot handed to him by the Belarusian leader.

During a visit to the Kremlin in 2018, the president gifted Putin four sacks of potatoes.

In industry and manufacturing, Belarus is also known for its tractors—a source of national pride—and lingerie.

The economy has been badly affected by international sanctions.

Forests and migrants crisis

A landlocked plain, Belarus is divided between areas with Polish and Russian influences.

It also has vast natural reserves—marshlands, lakes, rivers and forests.

In the west, the Bialowieza forest stretches into Poland.

Formed 10,000 years ago, the forest is a UNESCO world heritage site—one of the last primeval forests in Europe and a great reservoir of biodiversity.

But Bialowieza is threatened by deforestation and has also been the backdrop of a migrant crisis which began in 2021 between Poland and Belarus.

Warsaw has accused Minsk of encouraging thousands of migrants from Africa and the Middle East to come to Belarus and to enter Polish territory in an attempt to destabilise the European Union.

In response, Poland has built a security fence through the forest which environmentalists warn is limiting the movement of wild animals.

Death sentence

Belarus is the last country in Europe and the former Soviet Union that still carries out capital punishment, killing people with a bullet to the back of the neck.

The dates of executions are never made public, the bodies of prisoners are not returned to their families and no information is released about where they have been interred.

Non-governmental organisations say 400 people have been executed in Belarus since 1991. The last reported execution dates back to 2022. — AFP