Contested Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko “won” his seventh presidential election on January 26 with a record 87 percent of the vote. His campaign was so tightly managed that none of the other four candidates had a single bad thing to say about the government. Some establishment party leaders even openly stated that they were running with Lukashenko, not against him. A lone ex-opposition member, Anna Kanopatskaya, proposed cautious reform, such as amnesty for political prisoners or transitioning to a parliamentary republic. However, even she directed her criticism away from Lukashenko toward the opposition in exile.
Still, the world should not be fooled by Lukashenko’s imitation election: he is embarking on his most unpredictable term yet. Minsk is swiftly approaching several important junctions in its domestic policy and relations with Russia, including the most consequential issue of its medium-term future: preparing for the transition of power.
Lukashenko wants to use his electoral victory to show the power system, Belarusian society, and outside forces that his regime is hale again, his legitimacy gap has been filled, and the upheavals of 2020—when protests rocked the country following the previous presidential election and were brutally crushed—are now firmly in the past. The people have been brought to heel, albeit through violence. Now Lukashenko feels that he should be treated like a victor and someone in complete control of his situation.
That message is not even entirely incorrect. Independent polls conducted by Chatham House and Belarusian Change Tracker in January found that despite deep polarization, public sentiment has improved toward the authorities since 2020.
About two thirds of the polls’ largely urban respondents, including a portion of Lukashenko’s critics, credit him with keeping Belarus out of direct involvement in Russia’s war against Ukraine. The emigration of hundreds of thousands from Belarus and rapid wage growth in an economy heated up by Russian defense orders have reduced the share of discontents.
None of this means real stabilization, however. Lukashenko’s bind is much bigger: his regime’s future is now shaped almost exclusively by factors beyond his control. For example, practically all aspects of Belarus’s economy directly depend on decisions made by Russia’s economic authorities.
The Belarusian ruble fluctuates in sync with the Russian ruble. Russia’s slowdown in GDP growth, driven partly by central bank policies, hits Belarusian producers with no alternate markets hard. Even new sanctions imposed on Minsk are because of its cooperation with Russia rather than its own actions.
Turbulence within Russia or in relations with it has always brought risks for Lukashenko. However, they are bigger this time, now that Lukashenko’s trusted foreign policy plays are not an option anymore. Minsk can no longer count on thawing relations with the West to compensate for any problems that might be triggered by Russia’s stagnating economy, intensified sanctions, or sudden fluctuations in global commodity prices.
After ten waves of political prisoners being released, the West is still not ready for dialogue with Lukashenko. Belarus’s large-scale repression at home and support for Russia’s war have raised the bar for engagement prohibitively high.
It is equally difficult to imagine how Lukashenko could be useful to the West. Few will see any initiative by Russia’s client state as truly independent. Furthermore, far more influential countries—EU member states and Ukraine—now worry that far-reaching deals could be made over their heads. Not many people care about Lukashenko’s attempts to rebuild his subjectivity right now.
As Lukashenko enters the fourth decade of his rule and the eighth decade of his life, the issue of a power transition is gradually seeping into the agenda. In the first week of this year alone, Lukashenko himself mentioned three separate times that Belarus would see generational turnover in power within the next five years.
He cannot be taken at his word, of course. Even if these announcements were more than electioneering and Lukashenko genuinely had a plan for transferring power, that plan could change at a moment’s notice. After all, Lukashenko promised not to run for president again after protests swept Belarus in 2020.
Nevertheless, the system of government is slowly but surely preparing for a transition that will be unprecedented for independent Belarus. A constitutional framework is already in place, having been created by Lukashenko during his previous term. He also codified guarantees and status for former heads of state. If Lukashenko’s health or other circumstances one day force him to hand over the presidency, he has somewhere to go. In 2024, Lukashenko assumed another leadership position in a new body: the All-Belarusian People’s Assembly, a congress of various functionaries not involved in the day-to-day management of the country.
It is unclear when or whether Lukashenko will take the most important step of this process: selecting a successor. Theoretically, he can keep inventing reasons to kick the can down the road and stay in power until he is physically incapable of managing the transition.
Even if we assume a relatively voluntary transfer of power, the regime will of course be vulnerable during this period. The Belarusian opposition will spy a window of opportunity. That means that Lukashenko will only reach a decision when he is sure that he has the situation fully under control.
It is near impossible to initiate a voluntary transfer of power until the contours of the postwar power configuration in the region and, consequently, the nature of Belarusian-Russian relations, become clear.
A total thaw in Belarus shortly before a power transition is also unlikely for the same reason. The experience of even superficial liberalization in 2014–2019, which was followed by the 2020 wave of protests, was enough for Lukashenko to understand where that leads.
Therefore, even if the West starts paying attention to Belarus’s signals, like releasing political prisoners, those gestures risk hitting the iron ceiling of the regime’s capacity for change. Lukashenko is more invested in making sure domestic politics remain utterly predictable during a critical period than he is in loosening the screws.
Lukashenko faces another, more pressing issue in his seventh term: preserving a comfortable status quo in Belarus’s relations with Russia after the hot phase of the Ukraine war is over. For all the uncertainty surrounding timelines and conditions, the war will almost certainly stop within the next five years. Both sides are exhausting their resources and need a break—to prepare for its continuation if nothing else.
It remains unclear what the Russian regime’s priorities and prospects will be during this new phase. The Kremlin might switch from Ukraine to another avenue for scoring foreign policy points, such as more forceful attempts to incorporate Belarus as a consolation prize for a war that did not achieve all its objectives.
However, there is another possible outcome: a Moscow increasingly unwilling or unable to compensate Minsk for the costs of its isolation by the West. Left without today’s Russian fiscal stimulus, with stagnating or falling demand for Belarusian products, Lukashenko will need larger-scale direct subsidies from Russia. However, his ability to make the deal worthwhile for Moscow may diminish in the absence of a hot war.
Whether the Kremlin cares too much about Belarus or too little, any shift in the current equilibrium spells danger for Minsk. Lukashenko might be on a power trip after manufacturing a seventh term, but his task ahead is monumental: keeping relations with his guarantor from going to either extreme.
