Edikas Jagelavicius

From 23 to 27 September 2022, the Russian forces organised a sham election process - pseudo-referendum as a pretext for the formal annexation of the regions of occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson by Russia. The annexation of the four regions was announced on 30 September 2022.

In the 2024 parliamentary elections in Belarus, the de facto authorities organized elections on February 25, 2024, to elect 110 members of the lower house and local councils. This was the first time Belarus implemented a “single voting day,” a practice adopted from Russia. No genuine opposition was allowed to participate. OSCE ODIHR observers were refused and instead 235 pro-regime "international observers" were invited to legitimize the process.

In the presidential election held in Belarus on January 26, 2025, incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko secured his seventh term with over 87% of the vote. The election was widely criticized by international observers and opposition figures, who labeled it a sham due to the lack of genuine competition and suppression of dissent. The EPDE has exposed how over 90 politically biased “observers” who were deployed to whitewash this fraudulent election. The Lukashenka regime, notorious for systematic human rights abuses and repression of civil society, manufactured international legitimacy by inviting hand-picked “observers”—many with direct ties to authoritarian regimes, Kremlin-linked disinformation networks, or criminal investigations in their home countries.