By Mark Trevelyan

(Reuters) – Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has forgiven about 15 inmates on Friday’s called State Media, a humanitarian gesture, two days before the election where he has set his 31 years of rule.

Lukashenko, a close ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin, assured to win the seventh five-year term on Sunday.

The state said Lukashenko forgave eight people convicted of extremist activity and seven were sentenced for drug crimes. It does not provide any names.

The exile opposition says that Sunday vote is a meaningless pretense because all leading critics are imprisoned or forced to flight, and independent media is banned and blocked.

EU’s foreign activity Anitta Hipper said to journalists: “This is an exercise that is completely democratic. The elections are a perfect cheat. And it’s not election if you already know who’s win. “

Belarus accuses this week’s European politicians intervene by condemning the vote before it happens.

Lukashenko, 70, faced four other candidates, but no one showed any serious challenge or criticism. He said he was very busy to track the election campaign, but offered a sweetener to voters this week by announcing that pensions rise 10% from February 1.

Political analysts say the veteran leader hopes to use the election and the subsequent set of incarcerating prisoners to try to repair the western relationships, which imposes the waves Belarus punishment due to the record of human rights and support for Russian war in Ukraine.

His efforts became more urgent, they said, as he contemplated the possibility of peace talks in Ukraine this year and tried to get the victories for himself and the conflict.

Protests follow 2020 election

The mass protests neared Lukashenko from the power after the previous election in 2020, when the government’s government supported the opposition statement and stolen victory from its candidate, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.

He used his security facilities to crush demonstrations, arrest ten thousand people.

Since then, the EU and the United States refused to recognize him as legitimate leader in Belarus. He denied the vote-rigging and said that people chose to stay in power.

Lukashenko, spoke to a mass rally in Minsk on Friday, said Belarusians learned the protest lessons and similar demonstrations would not follow this election.

“We have almost destroyed ourselves, let’s open it,” Lukashenko told the rally a video on the state’s news agency website.

“… We’re not going to get back to 2020.”

The human rights group of Viasna, banned by Belarus as an extremist organization, states that there are about 1,250 political prisoners, even after release more than 250 last year. Many of the discharges are ill, old or nearly after their sentences.

Lukashenko denies with any political prisoners.

Tsikhanouskaya, the leader of the exile opposition, tells Reuters in an interview this week Lukashenko played his “routine game” to free prisoners who dropped the hope of winning rewards from the west.

“What’s in the democratic world you call election is nothing alike with this event in Belarus.

In street interviews in the capital Minsk, residents were careful when asked what they were waiting from the election.

“Both of the past, the same as always. What should be considered?” Said a woman, refusing to give up his name.