Lukashenko wins with 87.6% of vote: Exit poll

Belarus's President Alexander Lukashenko, in power since 1994, won re-election on Sunday in an election without real competition and slammed by the EU as a "sham", a state exit poll said.

- Agencies

MINSK:

The poll said Moscow-aligned Lukashenko won a seventh consecutive term with 87.6% of the vote. All of the 70-year-old's meaningful opponents are in prison or in exile.

The electoral commission said turnout was 81.5% in the election, in which 6.9 million people were eligible to vote.

Candidates picked to run against Lukashenko had campaigned in favour of him.

The Moscow ally said he did not care if the EU recognised the vote or not, and said he had "no regrets" over letting his "older brother" Vladimir Putin invade Ukraine through Belarus in 2022 - despite hundreds of thousands of deaths in the three-year war.