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 further extend his 31-year rule.

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,

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