Belarusian leader and Russian ally Alexander Lukashenko extended his 31-year rule on Monday after electoral officials declared him the winner of a presidential election that Western governments rejected as a sham.

Belarusian leader and Russian ally Alexander Lukashenko extended his 31-year rule on Monday after electoral officials declared him the winner of a presidential election Western governments rejected as a sham.

Election officials say Lukashenko received 86.8 percent of vote amid accusations the vote was neither free nor fair.

Belarus on Sunday held an orchestrated election virtually guaranteed to give its 70-year-old autocrat, Alexander Lukashenko, yet another presidential term on top of his three decades in power.

As an East African bloc urged an immediate ceasefire in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwandan-backed M23 rebels who seized the city of Goma extended their advance on Wednesday, and Congo said it planned a campaign to recover lost territory.

Victory “demonstrates your high political authority,” the Kremlin chief gushes about his counterpart in Minsk.

Opposition leader-in-exile Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya labeled Lukashenko’s successful reelection as “sheer nonsense.” Before Sunday’s vote, she had encouraged voters to cross out every candidate’s name on the ballot.

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