Belarus’s election was a sham. The West’s response has been feeble

IN A COUNTRY in the heart of Europe grisly acts were being committed this week, with the approval of Russia and China, the mildest of European protests and near-silence from America. An election was rigged; the challenger was forced to leave the country; protesters are being beaten and jailed. The perpetrator is Alexander Lukashenko, a 65-year-old dictator who has ruled the former Soviet republic of Belarus for most of its 30 years of independence. With luck, though, he may have overreached.

After a presidential election on August 9th the authorities proclaimed that Mr Lukashenko had won 80% of the vote. But the process was rigged from the start (see article). Opposition candidates had been jailed or had gone into exile; most independent observers were barred and “preliminary” voting was extended to allow more time for ballot-stuffing. Mr Lukashenko has done all this before and got away with it, largely because he retained enough support to claim a degree of legitimacy.

This time, however, he appears to have lost most of the population, thanks partly to his extraordinary incompetence in dealing with covid-19. They queued up to vote for Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, a 37-year-old former teacher who became an accidental candidate after her popular vlogger...