So Much For Free Elections!!!!!
The overweight (and he really is overweight) guy is an electoral miracle worker.
Except that…
He isn’t!
Andrei Bastunets doesn’t mince his words when he asserts that Alexander Lukashenko’s Belarus is the “Black Hole of Europe and one of the most dangerous places for journalists.” (ABC News, “Belarus sentences journalist to 4 years in prison, days after release of over 50 political prisoners,” September 16, 2025.)
Bastunets, head of the Belarusian Association of Journalist, offers a sliver of insight into Vladimir Putin’s favorite oppressor of a human rights and religious freedoms, a dictator who’s practiced a quick slight-of-hand on the Trump Administration.
Belarusians went to the polls on January 26, 2025, voting for one of five presidential candidates.
In a miracle rivaling the Feeding of the Multitudes (Matthew 13:13-21), Lukashenko, who – in 2012 – bragged to Reuters “I am the last and only dictator in Europe. Indeed, there are none anywhere else in the world” snagged (or so he claims) a whopping 86.8% of the vote, extending his 31-year rule. The vote was neither fair nor free because independent media are banned in Belarus and all leading opposition figures have either been jailed or fled the country.
In fact, Lukashenko is such a sleazoid that in September 2020 Josep Borrell, former High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission, told the European Parliament, “The situation is clear for us. We consider the elections of August 9 fraudulent. We don’t recognize Lukashenko as the legitimate president of Belarus.”
And that was five years ago!
Lukashenko has become more abhorrent and – during Putin’s war against Ukraine – more odious.
“The desire for power has been driving him for thirty years. It does not let him relax for a second,” Valery Karbalevich, his unofficial biographer and a political observer at Radio Liberty, told Al Jazeera. “Power and life are the same thing … and he does not imagine his life without power.” (“Lukashenko: ‘A hostage of the system that he himself created,’” Al Jazeera, January 25, 2025.)
With a population hovering around 9.5 million and bordering Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Latvia and Lithuania, landlocked Lithuania was once part of the Soviet Union. The now dictator was the only lawmaker in Soviet Belarus to vote against his country’s independence in 1991. Thirty-four years later, President Donald Trump, en route to his August 15 Alaska meeting with Russian dictator Vladamir Putin, became the first American president to put in a call to Lukashenko – a Belarusian diplomatic first. Then, in an over-the-top social media post, Trump referred to Lukashenko as a “highly respected President” – significant because no European leaders recognize the legitimacy of his regime and European leaders have avoided calling him “president” since 2020.
As he did in 2025, Lukashenko claimed a more-than-80% victory in the 2020 presidential election; then hundreds of thousands of citizens poured into the streets to protest the fraud. They were met by truncheon-wielding riot squads and the arrests and torture of thousands.
Faced with shortages of everyday staples, including potatoes, and mass migrations following the 2020 non-election, Lukashenko reintroduced Soviet-style pricing and the acceptance of more than 150,000 Pakistanis to fill the worker gap.
“This man is capable of giving an order to kill if someone goes against him,” said Pavel Latushka, Belarus’s now-exiled former Minister of Culture in the January 25, 2025 Al Jazeera report:
“Fear. That is why officials sit with their heads down during meetings with him,” Latushka said.
“Everyone is afraid to look him in the eye. This is a paternalistic system of power. As soon as he leaves, everyone’s heads will rise, everyone will start talking and acting differently. In public, Lukashenko is outwardly a very cruel person, capable of publicly humiliating anyone. He does not take into account other people’s points of view.”
The August telephone conversation between Lukashenko and the American president resulted in the September 11 release of 52 political prisoners – explaining Trump’s call and the U.S. lifting some sanctions on Belavia, the Belarusian national airline, which will again be able to repair and buy parts for its aircraft, including Boeing aircraft.
Wow! Maybe the dictator is coming around.
No way!
According to the Belarusian human rights center Vyasna [also spelled Viasna], as of September 6, it has documented 1,197 people in Belarus who are considered to be political prisoners; in the past five years, 8,532 people have faced politically motivated criminal charges, and 7,299 have been sentenced.
The dictator played the American administration like a Stradivarius. Freed Belarusian journalist Aleh Supruniuk was secretly convicted of participating in an “extremist group” and sentenced to three years imprisonment on August 8 – before the Trump-Lukashenko call. His sentencing was only made public on August 25 by the exiled Belarusian Association of Journalists – after the call.
On August 15, the multinational, London-based National Union of Journalists (“Belarus: journalists imprisoned, exiled and persecuted”) reported:
“The plight of journalists in Belarus persecuted for just doing their job is being highlighted by the International Federation of Journalists, backed by the NUJ.
“Currently, 37 journalists remain behind bars and 39 media organisations have been declared ‘extremist formations’, five years after President Aleksander Lukashenko’s latest fraudulent electoral victory.
“Journalists and media in the country face an intensified crackdown, including disproportionate prison sentences.”
On June 16, 2024, Israeli i24 News (“Lukashenk accused of antisemitism following controversial remarks”) cited a number of Lukashenko comments “during a recent meeting on corruption.”
"There is a list of 30 suspects here. Forgive me, I'm not antisemitic, but more than half of the accused are Jewish."
"What's going on here? Have they [the Jews] assumed a special privileged status? Stealing and not thinking about their future? In Belarus, everyone is equal before the law. Jews, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Russians, and also Poles. Everyone."
In December 2023, Lukashenco offered this observation:
“Armenians are smart people. After all, there isn’t even a single Jew there. Do you know why? Because Armenians are the smartest people,”
[EDITORS’ NOTE: In fact, there are between 500 and 1,000 Jews living in Armenia.]
In 2021, during a ceremony marking Belarus’s independence day – the liberation of the capital city of Minsk from the Nazis in 1944, he opined:
“The Jews succeeded in causing the entire world to kneel to them and no one will dare raise a voice and deny the Holocaust.”
Prior to the Russian assault on Ukraine, Belarusian Jehovah’s Witnesses were allowed to perform some form of alternative to military service. To curry the favor of the Russian autorcrat, sycophant Lukashenko turned against Witnesses:
“…the beginning of the war in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, revealed the absence of a legal mechanism for alternative civilian service during mobilization, leading to the criminal prosecution of hundreds of conscientious objectors. This situation fails to acknowledge the deeply held beliefs that motivate their uncompromising stance and does not respect their right to act according to their conscience. Such treatment is inconsistent with the principles of human rights and the Constitution of Ukraine, which states: ‘In the event that the performance of military duty is contrary to the religious beliefs of a citizen, the performance of this duty shall be replaced by alternative (nonmilitary) service.’” (“Imprisoned for Their Faith – Ukraine” JW.org.)
On August 18, 2025, five Witnesses men were in prisoned for conscientious objection and are serving sentences of up to 60 months. An additional two Witness men are currently in pretrial detention, awaiting sentencing.
On April 22, 2025 (Easter Sunday), the Brussels-based non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch online publication – HRWF – reported on “the increasingly deteriorating situation of freedom of religion or belief in Belarus” and:
“On December 30, 2024, Catholic priest Fr. Henrikh (Henadz) Okolotovich, parish priest of St. Joseph’s Church in Volozhin, was sentenced by the Minsk Regional Court to 11 years in a high-security penal colony. He was convicted of ‘high treason’ …a charge that carries the death penalty in Belarus.
“The trial was held behind closed doors, with no press, public, or Vatican representatives present….
“According to the religious news outlet Katolik.life, the case was built on unsubstantiated allegations that Fr. Okolotovich had passed secret information causing an estimated €1 million in damages to the state. No evidence of guilt was presented, and the priest pleaded not guilty.
“Fr. Henrikh is one of Belarus’ most respected Catholic clergy,… During the Soviet era, he studied theology in secret and was secretly ordained. Since the early 1980s he has played a pivotal role in reviving the Catholic Church in Belarus, especially in rural regions. He is known for preaching in the Belarusian language and for his deep commitment to national culture.
“At the time of his trial, Fr. Henrikh was in critical health: he had suffered a heart attack, undergone surgery for cancer, and required continuous medical supervision. He had been held in KGB custody for over a year. Parishioners say the charges were based on mistranslated documents, threats, and coercion. In letters from detention, he wrote: ‘I only ask for prayers. I am innocent.’”
On September 18, OSV News (formerly the Catholic publication Our Sunday Visitor) reported:
“Human rights campaigners have accused the Belarus government of using imprisoned Catholic priests as ‘hostages,’ as a Polish Carmelite [the Carmelites are a Catholic religious order] became the latest detained for alleged espionage.
"’The state sees Poland and the Catholic Church as enemies. ... This is why they're staging these set-ups,’ explained Andrei Krylov, a political prisoner newly released from a five-year term for ‘organizing mass riots.’
"’The Belarus regime is a criminal entity, and the only pressure it fears is media publicity,’ Krylov said.
"’We need to get this across to the world, we need to get this across to the Vatican, so they can do something, free people. So the regime will be afraid.’"
Speaking in Vilnius, Lithuania, Krylov was among the 52 prisoners of conscience released on September 11. According to the OSV report, Krylov has said that Father Akalatovich
“had resisted KGB police pressure to testify falsely against other Catholic clergy and had refused to request a pardon, believing he was being held as a ‘hostage and prisoner of war because of his faith.
“Meanwhile, a prominent lay Catholic confirmed that priests were often blackmailed during ‘preventive conversation’” with officials in the ex-Soviet republic, using espionage and sexual abuse accusations…
“Father Grzegorz Gawel, a 27-year-old Carmelite from Krakow’s Basilica of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, was detained Sept. 4 in a parking lot at Lepel, near Vitebsk, and accused of collecting information about ‘Zapad-2025,’ a Russian-Belarusian military exercise.
“Belarus’ state TV said the Carmelite had been handed an eight-page printout by a local collaborator ‘in the interests of Polish special services,’ adding that the filmed incident provided ‘irrefutable evidence’ of his ‘spying activities.’
“Father Gawel’s arrest was confirmed in a brief Sept. 6 statement by the Krakow Carmelites,…
“In his interview, Krylov said he had had few contacts with Father Juchniewicz, a ‘kind and benevolent person,’…
“However, he added that he had been close to Father Akalatovich, who was handcuffed and hooded by KGB police in November 2023, after being lured to a Valozyn cemetery by a false request to conduct a burial.
“All money and possessions were seized from the priest, Krylov said, after he was told he owed the state 1 million euros in damages for diverting military aircraft at his village presbytery.
“…Father Akalatovich had been taken to Minsk in mid-2025 and offered freedom to return to his parish if he helped compromise the Vatican’s nuncio, Archbishop Ceffalia, by planting a device in his luggage.
“Despite KGB pestering, however, he had refused, Krylov told Christian Vision, insisting he would never ‘betray God’ by ‘committing such a crime.’
“Christian Vision’s coordinator, Natallia Vasilevich, told OSV News it was widely assumed the priests had been arrested to ‘escalate tensions’ with Poland and pressure the Vatican to remain silent about human rights abuses…
“Fathers Akalatovich and Juchniewicz are among 1,184 Belarusian inmates currently recognized by human rights groups as political prisoners, who include an eminent Catholic layman, Ales Bialiatski, winner of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize.”
According to the Nobel Prize web site (nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2022):
“Ales Bialiatski has worked to promote democracy and human rights in Belarus since the 1980s. He has been called a beacon of light for these efforts throughout Eastern Europe.
“A constitutional amendment adopted in 1996 gave President Alexander Lukashenko dictatorial powers, triggering protests and demonstrations. The authorities cracked down hard on the protests, and many people were jailed. Ales Bialiatski then founded the organisation Viasna (Spring) to provide support for the incarcerated demonstrators and their families. In the years that followed, Viasna evolved into a human rights organisation that documented the authorities’ abuses against and torture of political prisoners.
“As a result of Ales Bialiatski’s work, the government authorities sought to silence him. In 2011, they sentenced him to several years’ imprisonment for alleged tax evasion. He was released in 2014. In June 2021, in the wake of the massive demonstrations against President Lukashenko’s dictatorship that broke out after the presidential election in August 2020, Ales Bialiatski was again jailed, this time without trial or conviction. He was still in prison when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022.”
Ales Bialiatski
Given the well-documented reports of Lukashenko’s antisemitism and violations of human rights and religious freedoms, it is time for the White House to recognize him for what he is – not a ‘highly respected President” but a thin-skinned and murderous dictator.
It is time for the American president to recognize that, when it comes to Lukashenko, “The desire for power has been driving him for thirty years. It does not let him relax for a second.”
It is time for the American president to abandon his self-seeking campaign and promote the freedom of a real Nobel Peace Prize laureate.