The official representative of the EU foreign policy service Peter Stano explained why Brussels refused to recognize the leader of the Belarusian opposition Svetlana Tikhanovskaya as the country's president. In an interview with Lente.ru, he noted that this was due to the fact that the presidential elections in Belarus were not fair and did not meet international standards.
“We do not recognize Svetlana Tikhanovskaya as president, we hold discussions with her, but we don’t consider her president, because there were no free and fair elections in the country,” Stano said.
Earlier, the representative of the European Commission also called the conditions for the recognition of Alexander Lukashenko as the legitimate president of Belarus. According to him, this will be possible if the Belarusian people vote for him during free and fair elections.
A wave of protests took place across Belarus in 2020. After the presidential elections, which took place on August 9, the CEC announced that Lukashenka received 80 percent of the vote. His rival in the elections, the wife of opposition blogger Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, won only 10 percent of the vote. Citizens of the country who disagreed with such results took to the streets, protests continued for several months. A number of opposition politicians and activists were arrested or fled abroad, including Tikhanovskaya herself.
