Belarus' opposition activists and Western officials on Monday denounced an orchestrated election that extends the more than three-decade rule of authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko. The country's exiled opposition leader called the result “sheer nonsense.

Belarusians are voting in a closely-managed presidential election that is all but certain to extend the one-man rule of Alexander Lukashenko, in power since 1994 and Europe’s longest-serving leader.

Belarus held an orchestrated election over the weekend that the opposition and the EU rejected as a farce, extending President Lukashenko's more than 30 years in power.