The members of the European Union (EU) do not recognize the result of the August 9 presidential election in Belarus, after which the current president Aleksandr Lukashenko was proclaimed the winner. The EU leaders announced during an extraordinary summit by videoconference.

Assuring that the EU is with the people of this country, the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, added that the EU will soon adopt sanctions against a substantial number of leaders of Lukashenko’s regime, responsible for violence, repression, and electoral fraud. Agerpres mentioned.

“We strongly support the right of the people of Belarus to determine their own destiny,” Charles Michel insisted, assuring the unity of the 27 in this matter after their video conference meeting.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country holds the six-month presidency of the EU Council, stressed that Belarusians must find their own way before calling for a dialogue that includes Lukashenko.

In recent days, tens of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets of Minsk and other Belarusian cities to protest the controversial re-election of Lukashenko as president in the August 9 presidential election. 

The opposition is convinced that the vote was rigged, and it has announced a general strike. Lukashenko cites the official results of the election, which gives him more than 80 percent of the vote, and opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya only 10 percent.

Belarusian police violently intervened against the protesters, detaining thousands of them, many of whom said they had been ill-treated or even tortured in detention.

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