A female candidate is challenging authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, amid unrest over the pandemic.

The candidate favored to win is the same as the past 26 years -- Alexander Lukashenko, the authoritarian leader who has ruled the former Soviet country since 1994.

A rally in Minsk last month was the largest demonstration in Belarus since the fall of the Soviet Union.

At the same time he is confronting the popular discontent, Lukashenko is facing other challenges on multiple fronts.

There is greater discontent among Belarus' elite and most significantly his relationship with Belarus' key sponsor, Russia, has soured.

Police officers detain a protester during a rally against the removal of opposition candidates from the presidential elections in Minsk, Belarus, July 14, 2020.

Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus with an iron fist for 26-years, has faced the largest opposition protests against his rule as he runs for re-election in the Aug.

Now for the first time, he could lose it," said Alexander Feduta, who was a campaign aide to Lukashenko in the 1990s and is now an analyst critical of him.

Veronika Tsepkalo, left, wife of non-registered candidate Valery Tsepkalo, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, candidate for the presidential elections, center, and Maria Kolesnikova, a representative of Viktor Babariko, right, raise their arms during a meeting in support of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya in Minsk, Belarus, July 19, 2020.

Lukashenko mocked the pandemic as global hysteria and refused to impose significant quarantine measures in Belarus, despite pleas from the World Health Organization.

Yaroslav Romanchuk, an economist who ran as a candidate against Lukashenko in 2010 said the authorities' response had reminded him of the Soviet reaction to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986.

And that's what made people so furious," Romanchuk said.

Last week, Belarusian security forces arrested said they had detained 33 Russian mercenaries in a resort near Minsk who they alleged had been sent to destabilize the election.

Lukashenko has claimed to uncover foreign plots before previous elections and many analysts said they suspected this was at least partly a pre-election spectacle.

Belarus' President Alexander Lukashenko gives a speech during a military parade to mark the 75th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two, Minsk, May 9, 2020

The fear for Lukashenko now, analysts said, is that the Kremlin might be open to him being replaced with another figure, provided they are friendly to Russia

None of the past six elections in Belarus has been deemed free and fair by international observers

A violent crackdown though could trigger a worse crisis for Lukashenko, some observers said