Opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya calls on European leaders not to recognize election results in Belarus

Belarusian presidential candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya (Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya) has released a new address to the European Council. The English-language video was uploaded to the Youtube channel “Country for Life.”In the video, Tikhanovskaya urges European leaders not to recognize the results of the contested presidential elections in Belarus.  

“The August 9th elections were neither fair nor transparent. The results were falsified. People who went out to defend their vote in the streets of their cities all across Belarus, were brutally beaten, imprisoned, and tortured by the regime,” she says. “I call on you not to recognize these fraudulent elections. Mr. Lukashenko has lost all legitimacy in the eyes of our nation.”

According to election officials, incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko (Alyaksandr Lukashenka) won 80.1 percent of the vote in the Belarusian presidential elections on August 9. Tikhanovskaya officially came in second with 10.1 percent. All of the presidential candidates, except for Lukashenko, refused to recognize the outcome of the vote.

The United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, as well as the foreign ministers of 27 European Union countries have already stated that they do not recognize the results of the presidential elections in Belarus.

EU leaders are set to hold an extraordinary summit to discuss the crisis in Belarus on Wednesday, August 19.