What election will bring: Maybe a new airbase, definitely the same president in Belarus

There has been some talk this year of Belarus—sometimes referred to outside of the country as “Europe’s last dictatorship”— changing direction. Some said it was driftingfrom Moscow and toward Brussels; others took its recent release of political prisoners as a sign of positive political change.

And there has indeed been a change. For the first time in history, the current presidential campaign—to be concluded with elections on October 11—does not feature a bright candidate who could become an alternative to Lukashenka, or a clear opposition strategy (for example, an organized boycott), or even a protest against the ballot-rigging. In fact, the 2015 election race has been called the most uninteresting in the last several years of Aliaksandr Lukashenka’s 21-year rule.