Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko pardoned 15 prisoners on Friday in what state media called a humanitarian gesture, two days before an election in which he is set to extend his 31-year rule.

Belarus has more than 1,000 political prisoners, many of them detained during the mass protests that erupted after Lukashenko’s contentious re-election in 2020

The presidential election in Belarus will be a landmark event for many people far beyond the Commonwealth of Independent States, CIS Secretary General and head of the CIS observation mission at Belarus' presidential election Sergei Lebedev said at a meeting of the CIS Advisory Council of Heads of Electoral Bodies,