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When a dictator wants to publicly overcompensate for an election loss five years earlier, his ego must be very bruised. This is what happened in Belarus during the presidential “election” on 26 January 2025.
Belarusians still live in the reality of the fraudulent 2020 election when Russia-backed dictator Aliaksandr Lukashenka jailed or exiled his opponents, crushed mass pro-democracy protests, and launched a crackdown that has now been continuing for nearly five years.
Ahead of the 2020 election, hope was high as new politicians emerged, and informal polls on Telegram showed that 97% of people in Belarus wanted political change in the country, leaving Lukashenka with just 3% support. A meme was born: “Sasha 3%”. But his Central Election Committee “counted” 80% of votes for him, sparking mass protests and ongoing resistance.
Lukashenka waited nearly five years to respond to the meme that highlighted his woeful support. During his “re-election” on 26 January, he claimed that he received the support of 86.82% of voters. Conveniently, this was just under 1% lower than Putin had during his last elections in 2024 – so the dictatorial race remains friendly and, let’s say, respectful.
But jokes aside, no democratic country or institution could call it anything other than a sham election. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the president-elect of Belarus, told Index: “For the first time, the democratic world made statements of non-recognition of Belarus’s ‘election’ even before voting day. It’s clear that Lukashenka’s attempts to legitimise himself have failed. We can call it a self-reappointment, a farce, a circus – but not an election.”
The Belarusian dictator completely ignored all fundamental principles of free and fair elections. Moreover, he continues mass repression in the country every day. “The crackdown on the people only intensified ahead of the ‘election’,” said Tsikhanouskaya. “Lukashenka continues to behave as if hundreds of thousands are marching outside his palace, just like in 2020. But resistance against him is impossible in Belarus right now – you are immediately jailed and handed harsh sentences.”
This year’s election was an easy and relaxed “win” for Lukashenka, unlike in 2020 when he had to face public unrest and didn’t know how to respond – for example, to crowds of factory workers chanting “Lukashenka into prison van” or “Go away”.
One trick Lukashenka’s Central Election Commission has been using for decades is forcing people into early voting – changing the real ballots is easier this way rather than doing it on Sunday, the main election day. The Central Election Commision claimed that early voter turnout was a record 41% this time. Students and workers of the state sector are often persistently called and even brought in groups to do early voting. Independent observers often see this process as a tool to manipulate votes. Moreover, the human rights centre Viasna reported that at one polling station in the Ivatsevichy region in Southern Belarus, the commission members followed voters to booths and sometimes showed people where to mark the ballot for Lukashenka.
But another rigged election and the seventh term of the dictator doesn’t mean the fight is over. Belarusian activists, independent journalists, and exiled democratic forces refuse to let Lukashenka’s regime ignore the will of the people and silence their voices.
“For over four years, the people of Belarus have been showing the dictator that they want him gone,” said Tsikhanouskaya. “They see no future for the country with Lukashenka clinging to power. But their voices are silenced – it’s a situation where nine million people are held hostage. So our goal remains unchanged since August 2020: we keep working tirelessly for freedom and democracy in Belarus, the release of all political prisoners, and an end to violence and repression.”
While it is crucial for all Belarusians to have the support of the international community, the country’s free media are in special need of help and solidarity. Firstly, there are still many media workers inside the country who suffer severe repression from the regime.
There are many known names like Katsiaryna Bakhvalava (Andreyeva), a Belsat journalist who was sentenced to eight years and three months in prison; Ihar Losik, blogger and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) journalist, sentenced to 15 years; or Andrei Aliaksandraŭ, a BelaPAN journalist and former Index employee, sentenced to 14 years.
The independent organisation Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) counts 41 media workers as political prisoners currently. But the real numbers are higher, as many cases of repression are intentionally not made public.
BAJ deputy chairman Barys Haretski explains the pressure people face from the regime: “Repressions against journalists in Belarus remain at a high level. Many of those behind bars prefer not to be spoken about publicly to avoid even more severe persecution. During the elections, pressure on the media only intensified – entire editorial offices were shut down, such as Intex-Press in Baranavichy, where the entire team ended up in pre-trial detention on criminal charges.
“The situation for journalists in the country remains critical. The authorities preemptively wiped out independent media even before the elections, and many media professionals who stayed in Belarus had to endure constant searches and detentions.”
Many independent media managed to leave the country and relaunch their work in exile in Lithuania and Poland, as the crackdown against civil society in Belarus aimed to decimate the whole field of those not controlled by the state. Having colleagues held hostage in Belarusian prisons, whilst trying to establish work in a new country and constantly fighting for the right of Belarusians to receive true and accurate news creates a very challenging environment.
Following the election, the situation became even more challenging for Belarusian free media. But this crisis came from an unexpected direction – the decision of newly-elected USA President Donald Trump to freeze foreign aid last month.
The dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the 90-day freeze on funding for overseas aid projects, meant that many Belarusian exiled journalists, media workers, and NGOs face an uncertain future. This directly affects all Belarusians, as well as journalists.
“The organisations that had USA support were often well-established, producing high-quality media content with significant reach inside Belarus,” said the Belarusian Association of Journalists’s Haretski. “ Many of them are now on the verge of shutting down but in the Belarusian media sector, we are used to crisis situations. And BAJ is engaged in a very large number of products, projects, and support for the media sector as a whole. This includes everything from psychological support to fact-checking and education”.
Often, Belarusian media in exile are the only ones able to provide balance against the state propaganda machine of Lukashenka. People inside the country continue secretly reading these media outlets using virtual private network (VPN) services, despite these being blocked and labelled extremist in Belarus, with criminal penalties for following their websites and social media.
“Belarusian independent media maintain a huge audience within the country – around three million people, or even more,” added Haretski. “Despite forced migration, blockages, and the criminalisation of media consumption, their influence remains significant.
“Losing this influence would mean handing the audience over to state-run Belarusian and Russian propaganda, which are eager to fill this vacuum. This would also affect attitudes towards the war in Ukraine – without independent information, propaganda would quickly brainwash the population, making Belarus a more loyal ally of Putin. So far, this hasn’t happened, largely thanks to the work of independent media.”
Rwanda’s Paul Kagame has won 99.15% of the vote in this week’s presidential poll, a margin of victory so high that even Belarusian dictator Aliaksandr Lukashenka has baulked at claiming such a high figure in his own rigged elections.
Rather than being a vote of confidence, the main reason for Kagame’s overwhelming “victory” was the lack of opposition.
Last month, Rwanda’s opposition leader, Diana Rwigara said that after all the time, work and effort she had put in, she was very disappointed she had been barred from contesting the country’s 15 July presidential election.
Rwigara also failed to run in the 2017 presidential poll as she was charged with inciting insurrection, an accusation levelled years earlier against her late father Assinapol Rwigara, before he died in a suspicious car accident which his family says was an assassination.
“@PaulKagame why won’t you let me run? This is the second time you cheat me out of my right to campaign,” Rwigara posted on social media platform X formerly known as Twitter.
Following Rwanda’s elections on Monday, Kagame’s only opposition were two little known candidates. Rwigara and five others including two of his major challengers, Victoire Ingabire and Bernard Ntaganda, had been barred from the ballot.
Rwanda’s National Electoral Commission said the incumbent got 99.15% of the vote.
Kagame, who was key to a scheme to process asylum seekers arriving in the UK “illegally” – an initiative now scrapped by the new Labour government – has been in power since the end of the country’s genocide in 1994.
Countless critics have been jailed or killed since then. One of them, Hotel Rwanda hero Paul Rusesabagina, known for sheltering hundreds of people during the genocide was jailed for supporting terrorism in 2021 after being arrested while he was travelling internationally. His sentence was later commuted, and he was allowed back to the USA.
In an interview with Index, Jeffrey Smith, the executive director of Vanguard Africa, a non-profit group that works with activists to support free and fair elections, said the election outcome does not reflect the will of the people.
“In Rwanda, there is freedom of expression. But that freedom is limited to expressing support for Paul Kagame and his ruling party — whether coerced or otherwise,” he said.
“These latest so-called ‘election’ results — a sort of performative art perfected by Kigali — clearly establish the Kagame dictatorship as among the most effective and effectively brutal police states of the 21st century.”
It’s a view shared by Ingabire, one of the opposition leaders who was barred from both the 2017 and 2024 elections. Ingabire published an opinion article in May in which she said Rwanda’s election will entrench the persistent suppression of opposition voices.
In January 2010, after 16 years in exile, Ingabire returned to Rwanda with the intention to register her political party and run for president but was arrested and jailed for 15 years. Kagame later pardoned her after international pressure but she has been prevented from leaving the country. There is an international campaign: #CallKagameforVictoire for heads of government around the world to ask Kagame to end Ingabire’s persecution.
“My trial, marred by irregularities and a lack of minimum fair trial standards, ended with a harsh sentence for crimes including ‘genocide ideology’, a controversial offence that has been used to silence dissent,” Ingabire wrote in her opinion article.
Ingabire said the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights later ruled in 2017 that her rights to freedom of opinion and expression had been violated, a verdict she says which highlights the broader issues of legal restrictions on speech and the challenges faced by political opposition in Rwanda.
Ingabire said many international observers see Rwanda as an exemplary country as it adeptly orchestrates communication campaigns and disseminates compelling narratives globally showcasing its purported capability to address both domestic and international challenges that include counterterrorism.
The country has also deployed Rwandan soldiers in multinational peacekeeping missions.
“This carefully crafted public image is not reflective of reality,” she said.
In Professor Nic Cheeseman’s book How to Rig an Election, he quotes President Aliaksandr Lukashenka of Belarus saying he ordered his 93 percent 2006 election victory to be changed to around 80 percent because more than 90 percent would not be psychologically well received.
The author, who is professor of democracy and international development at the University of Birmingham, told Index in an interview that Kagame’s margin of victory speaks volumes.
“If Lukashenka, the last dictator of Europe, thinks that winning more than 90% in an election is psychologically implausible, it is pretty clear that 99% tells us as much about President Kagame’s desire for absolute control as it does the wishes of the Rwandan people,” said Professor Cheeseman.
According to Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2024 report, Kagame’s government has suppressed political dissent through pervasive surveillance, intimidation, arbitrary detention, torture, and renditions or suspected assassinations of exiled dissidents.
“The practical space for free private discussion is limited in part by indications that the government monitors personal communications. Social media are heavily monitored, and the law allows for government hacking of telecommunications networks. Rwandan authorities reportedly use informants to infiltrate civil society, further discouraging citizens from voicing dissent. Individuals have been forcibly disappeared, arrested, detained, and assassinated for expressing their views,” said the report.
Apart from autocratic rule at home, last week the head of the United Nations Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO), accused Rwanda of supporting 23 March Movement (M23) rebels that are committing atrocities in the neighbouring country.
In January, Burundi rebels closed its borders with Rwanda after accusing its neighbour of funding rebel attacks.
A network of accounts flooded social media with disinformation in the run-up to the European Parliamentary elections a new report has found.
The report was commissioned by the Social Democrats in the European Parliament (S&D) grouping together with the Dutch delegation GroenLinks-PvdA and produced by disinformation specialisists Trollrensics.
It reveals that organised networks of thousands of accounts, which the researchers believe are of likely Russian origin, actively influenced public opinion on X in France and Germany during the elections while voters in the Netherlands, Italy and the English-speaking public were also affected by the troll networks
Trollrensics’ data analysis showed that at least 20% of all tweets about the French far-right politician Zemour came from this troll network, for example. However, the research company estimated the actual percentage is significantly higher as the networks manipulated the X algorithm to amplify specific themes.
The research also found that German political party AfD received a huge boost thanks to the troll army. At least 10.7% of the tweets about the AfD came from the disinformation network.
The network focused mainly on spreading pro-Russian propaganda, messages about anti-vaxxers with anti-vaccination narratives and anti-LGBTIQ+ messages.
Thijs Reuten, an MEP for the S&D, said, “We commissioned this independent study as we were curious about the extent of online foreign interference and how measurable it is – especially because this sometimes seems so hard to ascertain. This study has shown that significant influence took place during the European elections. Troll armies managed to make topics trend and at the same time make certain news reports less visible.”
Reuten added, “This clearly shows our democracy is vulnerable and that foreign powers are willing to spend a lot of money and effort to sow division in our population. We need to defend ourselves better against such organised attempts of foreign interference. I expect the European Commission and the intelligence services to be on top of this. Our open society is in danger if troll armies are able to manipulate social media and, therefore, the public debate”.
The report confirms concerns from European groups that large-scale troll networks from Russia were attempting to influence the outcome of the elections.
While the outcome of the 2024 election is yet to be finalised, results at the time of writing show that Eurosceptic conservatives are on course to win an extra 14 seats (taking them to 83), while right-wing nationalists will gain nine seats (to 58). Overall, the right, including centre-right politicians of the European People’s Party grouping, has done well, largely at the expense of the liberal and green party groupings. With just five nations out of 27, including Italy and Estonia, remaining to publish their final results, the overall picture is unlikely to change dramatically.
The move to the far right is evident across Europe. France, which elects 81 members to the European Parliament (EP), was perhaps where this was most evident. Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party is projected to receive around 31-32% of the vote, against President Macron’s centrist party, which is estimated to reach around 15% of the vote. Macron was so concerned about his party’s poor showing that he has called an election in the country. Belgium’s prime minister also handed in his resignation after the nationalist New Flemish Alliance emerged as the big winner after regional, national and European Parliament elections were held in the country on Super Sunday.
In Germany, Eurosceptic parties are projected to secure over 16% of the EP vote. The AfD tripled its support from voters under 24 from 5% in 2019 to 16% and gains six seats to reach 15. The Greens lost nine seats from 21 last time around. Austria’s far-right Freedom Party gained nearly 26% of the vote, gaining three seats, while in the Netherlands, Geert Wilders’s anti-immigration Party for Freedom gained six seats with 17% of the vote. A similar story played out in Poland, Spain, Greece, Bulgaria and Croatia.
But what is driving Europe’s veer to the right?
There is some evidence that the success of the far right comes from millennial and Gen Z voters shifting towards these parties. A third of French voters under 34 and 22% of young German voters favour their country’s far right, while in the Netherlands, the Party for Freedom has become the largest party among under-34s.
Young Europeans, mainly those aged 18-29, overwhelmingly rely on social media for daily news consumption. In Italy and Denmark, nearly three-quarters of young adults use social media for news daily (74% and 75%). A recent German youth study found that 57% of youth prefer social media for news and political updates.
There is growing concern that external actors, particularly from Russia, may have influenced the elections.
Media reports reveal that EU leaders were so concerned about foreign interference in the elections that they set up rapid alert teams to manage any serious incidents. Officials told the Guardian that disinformation has reached “tsunami levels.”
The evidence points to Russia.
Last December, France’s VIGINUM group, which is tasked with protecting France and its interests against foreign digital interference, published a report revealing a network of nearly 200 websites with addresses of the form pravda-xx.com or xx.news-pravda.com, where xx is the country identifier.
The sites, which generate little new content themselves, instead amplify existing pro-Russian content from state sources and social media, including posts from military blogger Mikhail Zvinchuk. Pro-Russian content relating to the Ukraine war is a particular favourite.
Thirty-four fact-checking organisations in Europe, showed that the Pravda network had spread to at least 19 EU countries. Fact-checking organisation Greece Fact Check, in cooperation with Pagella Politica and Facta news, has since noticed that the Pravda network has been attempting to convey large amounts of disinformation and pro-Russia propaganda to sway EU public opinion.
The organisation said that “minor pro-Russian politicians who run for the elections are quoted by state media such as Ria and then further amplified by the Pravda network, in what seems an attempt to magnify their relevance”.
A report by EDMO on EU-related disinformation ahead of the elections found that it was at its highest ever level in May 2024. Ministers for European affairs from France, Germany, and Poland cautioned about efforts to manipulate information and mislead voters. Across the EU, authorities observed a resurgence in coordinated operations spreading anti-EU and Ukraine narratives through fake news websites and on social media platforms Facebook and X.
Among the false stories that emerged and covered were reports that EU President Ursula Von der Leyen had links to Nazism and had been arrested in the European Parliament.
In Germany, there were stories circulating that the country’s vote was being manipulated, ballot papers with holes or corners cut were invalid and that anyone voting for the far-right party AfD would follow stricter rules. Other stories attempted to trick voters into multiple voting or signing their ballot papers, practices that would invalidate their votes.
The report also noted that around 4% of such disinformation articles have been created using AI tools.
The tsunami of disinformation looks unlikely to fade away any time soon. The Guardian says that the EU’s rapid alert teams have been asked to continue their work for weeks after the election.
A senior official told the paper, “The expectation is that it is around election day that we will see this interruption of narratives questioning the legitimacy of the European elections, and in the weeks around it.”