MOSCOW: Belarusians are flocking to large opposition rallies ahead of Sunday's presidential election, which has been marred by a crackdown on opponents of strongman Alexander Lukashenko.
Here are five things to know about the ex-Soviet country on the fringes of Europe that has been ruled by the authoritarian leader since 1994.
Belarus suffered the highest proportion of deaths in World War II after the Nazis attacked the Soviet Union in June, 1941 in Operation Barbarossa.
It took the country three decades to restore its pre-war population after some 2.3 million people died in the fighting.
In 1986, nearly one-quarter of the country was contaminated by nuclear fallout from the Chernobyl disaster in neighbouring Ukraine, including nearly two million hectares of farmland.
The exclusion zone around the destroyed plant covered swathes of Belarus and forced the evacuation of 330,000 residents.
While the exact number of Chernobyl-related deaths is unknown, the United Nations said in 2005 that it had been estimated that up to 4,000 people could eventually die among the higher-exposed populations.
Through the mid-2000s, scientists registered a sharp increase in cancer rates among Belarusians who were born the year of the disaster.
In early 2010, a small company in the capital Minsk launched the "World of Tanks" online video game, in which players face off in frenzied tank battles.
The game now boasts 160 million players and its developers are seen as trailblazers in the country's flourishing IT industry.
Belarus has opened an IT business park outside Minsk offering companies, staffed by well-educated and young workforces, tax incentives.
The burgeoning IT sector is an anomaly in a country whose government wields tight control over the economy with Soviet-style policies.
Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich became the country's first winner of the Nobel prize for literature in 2015.
The 72-year-old writer, known for gathering witness testimony of historic events, including the Chernobyl disaster and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, was not well-known in Belarus and local bookshops carried the Russian editions of her work.
She is an ardent critic of Lukashenko, describing his regime as "totalitarian," and has announced her intention to vote for opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya.
Belarus is the last country in Europe that still carries out the death penalty, but the government is tight-lipped about the punishment and gives sparse information about its use.
The timing of executions -- reportedly a single gunshot to the head -- is never revealed and the remains are not returned to families, who are not told where their relatives are buried.
The Viasna rights group estimates that Belarus executed 22 people between 2010 and 2019.
Lukashenko, a former collective farm director, appears to relish drawing attention to his links to the land.
When he visited the Kremlin in 2018, he gave President Vladimir Putin four sacks of potatoes that he boasted came from his own garden. People in the former Soviet Union still associate Belarus with potatoes.
The country also has strong manufacturing industries that have survived from Soviet times.
Belarusian lingerie and nightwear is still widely sold in the Baltic states, Central Asia and Russia.
Tractor manufacturing is another source of pride and farm machinery is paraded through the streets on Independence Day on July 3.
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