Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko takes his oath of office during his inauguration ceremony at the Palace of the Independence in Minsk, Belarus, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020. Lukashenko of Belarus has assumed his sixth term of office in an inauguration ceremony that wasn't announced in advance. State news agency BelTA reports that the ceremony will take place with several hundred top government official present. (Andrei Stasevich/Pool Photo via AP)

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus assumed his sixth term of office Wednesday during an inauguration ceremony that officials did not announce in advance after weeks of mass protests against the authoritarian leader’s reelection, which opposition activists maintain was rigged.

State news agency Belta reported that the swearing-in ceremony took place in the capital of Minsk with several hundred top government officials, lawmakers, representatives of media organizations and other prominent figures present.

Lukashenko, 66, took an oath in Belarusian with his right hand on the country’s Constitution, and the head of the country’s central election commission handed him .the official ID card of the president of Belarus.

“The day of assuming the post of the president is the day of our victory, convincing and fateful,” Lukashenko said at the ceremony. “We were not just electing the president of the country — we were defending our values, our peaceful life, sovereignty and independence.”

Oppenents in Belarus, including the candidate who placed a distant second in the country’s Aug. 9 presidential election, and representatives of European governments said the absence of public involvement in the inauguration only proved that the authoritarian Lukashenko lacked a valid mandate to continue leading.

“Even after this ceremony today, Mr. Lukashenko cannot claim democratic legitimization, which would be the condition to recognize him as the legitimate president of Belarus,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said, calling the secrecy “very telling.”

Lukashenko has run Belarus, an ex-Soviet nation of 9.5 million, with an iron fist for 26 years. Official results of the country’s Aug. 9 presidential election had him winning 80% of the vote. His strongest opponent, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, got 10%.

Tsikhanouskaya, who is in exile in neighboring Lithuania after being forced to leave Belarus, has not accepted the outcome of the election as valid. Neither have the thousands of her supporters who continued demanding Lukashenko’s resignation during more than six weeks of mass protests.

Tsikhanouskaya called the inauguration an attempt by Lukashenko to “declare himself legitimate.” She said “the people haven’t handed him a new mandate.”

“I, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, am the only leader that has been elected by the Belarusian people. And our goal right now is to build the new Belarus together,” she said in a video statement from Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital.

The United States and the European Union have questioned the election and criticized the brutal police crackdown on peaceful protesters during the first few days of demonstrations.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius called Wednesday’s inauguration ceremony “such a farce.”

“Forged elections. Forged inauguration. The former president of Belarus does not become less former. Quite the contrary. His illegitimacy is a fact with all the consequences that this entails,” Linkevicius said on Twitter.

Protests demanding Lukashenko to step down have rocked the country daily since last month’s election, with the largest rallies in Minsk attracting up to 200,000 people.

During the first three days of the protests, police used truncheons and rubber bullets to disperse crowds. Several protesters died, and more than 7,000 were detained.