Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko casts his vote in Sunday’s presidential election.
Photo: Andrei Pokumeiko/TASS/Zuma PressMOSCOW—Preliminary exit polls from Belarus’s presidential election projected its veteran leader, Alexander Lukashenko, to win 80% of the vote as he deployed troops to cordon off city squares and government buildings in the capital, Minsk.
Opposition supporters called for protests against what they described as a fraudulent election in which three of the main opposition candidates were barred from competing. Demonstrations and rallies in the run-up to Sunday’s vote suggested a groundswell of support for Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the 37-year-old wife of popular YouTuber Sergei Tikhanovsky, who had planned to contest the election before he was detained in May for allegedly inciting unrest.
Instead, exit polls published by Belarus’s election commission indicated that 65-year-old Mr. Lukashenko would have a sixth term in office despite simmering resentment over his heavy-handed rule and erratic handling of the coronavirus. Ms. Tikhanovskaya received 7% of the vote, with turnout at 79%. Tentative results are due to be released Monday.
“This is a propaganda PR campaign carried out by pro-government organizations,” said Valery Karbalevich, an independent political analyst in Minsk. “Their function is to legitimize the election results.”
Tensions are riding high in the country, strategically located between Russia and neighboring Ukraine and Poland. Mr. Lukashenko has threatened to suppress any protests and has accused his longtime ally, Russia, of trying to foment a revolt after Belarusian security forces arrested 33 Russian nationals for allegedly plotting to incite riots to destabilize its neighbor. Moscow has denied any involvement.
Opposition candidate Sveltana Tikhanovskaya fled her home before reappearing to vote Sunday.
Photo: Natalia Fedosenko/TASS/Zuma PressMs. Tikhanovskaya’s campaign said she fled her home to another location on Saturday. In a video message she thanked supporters for having faith in her and asked them to avoid violence while calling on security forces to ignore what she called criminal orders.
“We don’t need blood on the streets of our cities,” she said before re-emerging to cast her vote Sunday.
Mr. Lukashenko, meanwhile, vowed to maintain order in the former Soviet state earlier in the day.
“The situation cannot be underestimated, but to say that the country will be plunged into chaos from tomorrow or some kind of confrontation, or civil war, there are absolutely no grounds,” Mr. Lukashenko told journalists after casting his vote Sunday.
Mr. Lukashenko leaves after voting in Sunday’s election, the most closely contested in years.
Photo: Andrei Pokumeiko/TASS/Zuma PressRights group Amnesty International has reported hundreds of detentions in the run-up to Sunday vote. One opposition leader, Viktar Babaryka, was arrested on financial-crimes charges that his supporters say were falsified. One of Ms. Tikhanovskaya’s campaign managers, who previously worked with Mr. Babaryka, was arrested on Saturday. Minsk-based human-rights group Viasna reported that during the entire election campaign, which began on May 8, there more than 1,500 cases of arbitrary detention.
Photographs and video uploaded on social media from Minsk showed security forces establishing checkpoints on main roads. Local journalists reported that key installations and sites had been cordoned off as some residents began to gather.
Women voting at Belarus’s embassy in Moscow.
Photo: Stanislav Krasilnikov/TASS/Zuma Press
A woman votes at a polling station in Komsomolets village, near Minsk.
Photo: Yauhen Yerchak/EPA/ShutterstockThe growing repression in the country is testing the rapprochement that has developed in recent years between the West and Belarus, which the U.S. and Europe have cultivated as a buffer against Moscow’s growing influence in Eastern Europe.
Last week, the U.S. Senate adopted a bipartisan resolution condemning the crackdown on protesters and arbitrary arrests of activists, journalists and others, and calling for “a free, fair, and transparent presidential election” in Belarus.
European officials voiced similar sentiments in public remarks, while the U.S. State Department previously said Mr. Lukashenko has monopolized control of the state and undermined rule of law, including the manipulation of elections.
An election commissioner with a ballot box.
Photo: Valery Sharifulin/TASS/Zuma PressMr. Lukashenko, in turn, has lashed out at the West. In addition to detaining opposition candidates and accusing Russia of pursuing a covert destabilization campaign, he also said the U.S., the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or Ukraine is waging a hybrid war against his country.
“Lukashenko lost touch with the people long ago,” said political analyst Alexander Feduta, who headed the department of public and political information during the first few months of Mr. Lukashenko’s rule in the 1990s. “He is used to falsifying elections and sincerely doesn’t understand why this causes such discontent. He tends to explain everything by external interference.”
His supporters say Mr. Lukashenko, who ran a collective farm before the collapse of the Soviet Union, has managed to preserve the country’s independence.
“For the current president, the selling point is stability,” said Yuri Tserlukevich, a professor of finance at Arizona State University and head of the advisory board for the Center for Economic Research, or Beroc, a Belarusian economics think tank. “The disadvantage is he’s been playing this game for too long…that’s why we see a lot of push for change.”
Analysts and opposition leaders said Mr. Lukashenko’s victory would do little to subdue festering anger that has erupted over the country’s stagnating economy, the president’s alleged abuse of human rights and his dismissive handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
“People are tired of living in a country where nothing has changed for 26 years,” said Mr. Feduta.
Indeed, opposition activists such as Aleksandra Zvereva said before the vote that many Belarusians have simply had enough of Mr. Lukashenko and feel it is time for their voices to be heard.
“I think we’re in a situation where we have not had the right to a free vote for so many years, we have been afraid to say something for so many years, and now we are in a situation where we think we have nothing to lose,” Ms. Zvereva said.
—Nonna Fomenko in Moscow contributed to this article.
Write to Ann M. Simmons at ann.simmons@wsj.com
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