The smiling face of President Alexander Lukashenko gazed out from campaign posters across Belarus as the country held an orchestrated election guaranteed to give the 70-year-old autocrat another term in power.

“Needed!” the posters proclaim beneath a photo of Mr Lukashenko, his hands clasped together. The phrase is what groups of voters responded in campaign videos after supposedly being asked if they wanted him to serve again.

But his opponents, many of whom are imprisoned or exiled abroad by his unrelenting crackdown on dissent and free speech, would disagree. They call the election a sham – much like the last one in 2020 that triggered months of protests that were unprecedented in the history of the country of nine million people. The crackdown saw more than 65,000 arrests, with thousands beaten, bringing condemnation and sanctions from the West.

His iron-fisted rule since 1994 earned Mr Lukashenko the nickname of “Europe’s last dictator”, relying on subsidies and political support from close ally Russia.

He let Moscow use his territory to invade Ukraine in 2022 and even hosts some of Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons, but he still campaigned with the slogan, “peace and security,” arguing he has saved Belarus from being drawn into war. “It’s better to have a dictatorship like in Belarus than a democracy like Ukraine,” Mr Lukashenko said in his characteristic bluntness.

His reliance on support from Russian President Vladimir Putin helped him survive the 2020 protests.

Observers believe Mr Lukashenko feared a repeat of those mass demonstrations amid economic troubles and the fighting in Ukraine, and so scheduled the vote in January, when few would want to fill the streets again, rather than in August. He faces only token opposition.

The Russian president also echoed his US counterpart’s claim the conflict in Ukraine could have been prevented had he been in the White House in 2022 in what was his bluntest endorsement yet of Mr Trump’s refusal to accept his defeat in the 2020 election.

In the interview with Russian state television on Friday, Mr Putin praised Mr Trump as a “clever and pragmatic man” who is focused on US interests and said: “We believe the current president’s statements about his readiness to work together. We are always open to this and ready for negotiations.”

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Donald Trump’s foreign policy chief has said foreign aid to all countries apart from Israel and Egypt is to be halted. The results for Ukraine could be catastrophic, writes Sam Kiley in Dnipro

Ukrainian air defences downed 50 of 72 drones launched by Russia overnight, the air force said on Sunday.

It said that 9 drones were “lost,” referring to Ukraine’s use of electronic warfare to redirect Russian drones, while one is still in Ukrainian airspace, reported Reuters.

No casualties or damages have been reported yet.

Russia is trying to revive its information campaign aimed at deterring the US and other Western states from providing Ukraine with further military assistance, according to a US war think tank.

The Institute for the Study of War went on to say: “Ukraine remains in critical need of US and European military assistance to maintain its defense against Russian aggression and to conduct future negotiations from a position of strength.”

Authorities in Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast have said they will begin forcible evacuations of families with children in over 20 settlements in the area due to increased shelling from Russia.

Governor Vadim Filashkin said that families with children in several settlements in the Komar and Kryvorizhzhia communities will be evacuated on a mandatory basis, according to the Kyiv Independent.

“Now that the enemy has intensified shelling of Donetsk Oblast, people are suffering and dying every day, I ask parents to be very responsible about the evacuation,” Filashkin wrote.

“Children should live in peace and tranquility, not hide from shelling!”

He added that 76 children currently remain in the Komar area and 34 in Kryvorizhzhia.

Moldovan President Maia Sandu has described how her country’s cooperation with Ukraine “strengthens resilience and brings lasting stability to our region”.

She made the comments on a day when she travelled to Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Ukraine has praised Donald Trump’s threat to Vladimir Putin to end the Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “the hard way” using tariffs and sanctions as sending a “strong signal” to the Kremlin.

In his first major remarks on Ukraine after re-entering the White House, the US president urged Putin to “settle now and stop this ridiculous war” or face intensified sanctions, taxes and tariffs, adding: “We can do it the easy way, or the hard way.”

My colleague Andy Gregory reports:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday that the U.S. has not stopped military aid to Ukraine even though new American Secretary of State Marco Rubion announced he’s pausing foreign aid for 90 days.

Zelenskyy did not clarify whether humanitarian aid had been paused.

Ukraine relies on the US for 40 per cent of its military needs.

“I am focused on military aid; it has not been stopped, thank God,” he said at a press conference with Moldovan president Maia Sandu.