EU rejects election in Belarus and threatens new sanctions

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BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union rejected the election in Belarus on Sunday as illegitimate and threatened new sanctions.

Belarus held an orchestrated vote virtually guaranteed to give 70-year-old autocratic President Alexander Lukashenko yet another term on top of his three decades in power.

“Today’s sham election in Belarus has been neither free, nor fair,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas and EU enlargement commissioner Marta Kos said in a joint statement.

“The relentless and unprecedented repression of human rights, restrictions to political participation and access to independent media in Belarus, have deprived the electoral process of any legitimacy," Kallas and Kos said.

They urged the Belarusian government to release political prisoners, estimating their number at more than 1,000, including an employee of the EU delegation in Belarus' capital, Minsk.

Kallas and Kos said that the decision to invite observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe only 10 days ago prevented the group from monitoring the full electoral process.

“For these reasons, as well as the involvement of the Belarusian regime in Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and its hybrid attacks against its neighbours, the EU will continue imposing restrictive and targeted measures” against the Belarusian government, the EU officials said.

They didn't elaborate on what eventual new sanctions would target, or provide a time frame.

Kallas and some EU foreign ministers are expected to meet Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya on Sunday night in Brussels for an informal, closed-door dinner.