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11 Aug, 2020 12:45

‘Total falsification’: Russian ruling party MP attacks ‘insane with power’ Lukashenko over ‘shameful’ election campaign

‘Total falsification’: Russian ruling party MP attacks ‘insane with power’ Lukashenko over ‘shameful’ election campaign

The Belarusian election was entirely falsified, and it’s impossible to know how many votes President Aleksandr Lukashenko really got, according to a prominent Russian politician, who thinks Russia shouldn’t recognize the result.

Speaking to Russian news site Gazeta, State Duma deputy Konstantin Zatulin from the pro-Putin United Russia party said that the Belarusian presidential campaign was mired with “total falsification and misinformation.”

Incumbent long-term leader Lukashenko was reported to have won over 80 percent of the votes in the August 9 election. However, the fairness of the election process has been criticized both inside Belarus and around the world, with many being of the view that the most prominent opposition candidate, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, vastly outperformed her official result of 10.09 percent. The response to the published results has been mass protests, with thousands of Belarusians taking to the streets in cities across the country.

Zatulin maintains that “insane with power” Lukashenko “obviously” didn’t receive as many votes as he claims, and says that determining the true number of votes cast is an impossibility.

“The published results are not credible,” he explained. “As someone already said, Lukashenko won the election but lost the country, and this is because of his extremely selfish policy, which prioritized preserving his regime of personal power.”

Zatulin, a member of the  ruling United Russia party, also noted that the international community would almost certainly side with the Belarusian protestors.

Speaking to another Russian publication, the Ukraine-focused website Ukraina.ru, he called the election campaign “shameful,” and said that Lukashenko had “simply lost his understanding of reality.” He recommended that Russia should not recognize the results, but stay silent instead, maintaining a “de facto” relationship with the country’s Western neighbor.

Also on rt.com Belarus on the brink? Unloved in Moscow, a pariah again in the West & facing protests at home, Lukashenko is running out of road

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