Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko won a fifth term in office by a landslide on Sunday in an election that could see an easing of relations with the West and raise questions about his ties to Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Lukashenko’s re-election five years ago led to mass protests and the imprisonment of leading opposition figures, but support for his 20-year-old regime has risen since he cast himself as a guarantor of stability in the face of an economic crisis and a pro-Russian separatist conflict in neighbouring Ukraine. The West has long ostracised Lukashenko’s Belarus, described in 2005 by U.S. Secretary of …read more
Source: Egypt Independent
