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.

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

Russian, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko casts himself as a plain-spoken strongman and "president of the ordinary people".

By Mark Trevelyan (Reuters) -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.

Alexander Lukashenko was declared the landslide winner of presidential elections in Belarus. His victory was seen as a foregone conclusion in a country he's run for more than 30 years.

Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko extended his rule with a controversial win in an election rejected by Western nations as illegitimate. Securing 86.8% of the vote, Lukashenko's victory lacked free and fair conditions,

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.

The President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, claims to have won a landslide victory in an election already being denounced across the Western world as a “sham”.

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.