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The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, freed 123 prisoners on Saturday, including Nobel peace prize winner Ales Bialiatski and leading opposition figure Maria Kalesnikava, after the US lifted sanctions on Belarusian potash, a key export.
The announcement came after two days of talks with an envoy of the US president, Donald Trump, the latest diplomatic push since the Trump administration started talks with the autocratic leader.
The prisoner release, the largest since talks began, is part of a larger rapprochement the Lukashenko regime has been attempting with the west. A close ally of Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, Minsk is largely isolated from European and other western states due to its poor human rights record and brutal crackdown on popular protests.
The gradual detente is part of what US officials told Reuters was an attempt to pull him from Putin’s sphere of influence, an initiative about which Belarusian opposition has expressed doubts.
The announcement of the release, which included top opposition figures and human rights campaigners, was met with fanfare. Bialiatski, who co-won the 2022 Nobel peace prize, is a human rights champion who advocated on behalf of political prisoners before being jailed himself in July 2021.
Also released were Kalesnikava,one of a trio of women who led 2020 protests against Lukashenko, as well as Viktar Babaryka, arrested in 2020 while trying to run in opposition to Lukashenko in a presidential election.
The health of many of the prisoners has reportedly declined during their time in detention, as a result of what human rights groups say was mistreatment by the authorities.
Kalesnikava’s sister, Tasiana Khomich, said that her sister was grateful to the US for its role in facilitating her release.
“She told me she is very happy to be freed, that she is thankful to the USA and Trump for their efforts in leading the process, and to all countries involved,” Khomich told Reuters.
Relatives of the prisoners gathered outside the US embassy in Vilnius, Lithuania, where it is expected some of them will be taken from Belarus. Ukrainian authorities said that 114 civilians, including Ukrainian and Belarusian citizens, were transferred to Ukraine.
Trump’s Belarus envoy, John Coale, told reporters in Minsk that the US would be lifting sanctions on potash, “as per the instructions of president Trump”.
The US and EU placed sanctions on Belarus after the government cracked down on popular protests following a contested election in 2020 which included the mass detention and torture of political opponents.
More sanctions were imposed in 2022 after Belarus allowed Russia to use its territory for its invasion of Ukraine.
Belarusian opposition figures thanked Trump for his efforts and said that the prisoner release was evidence of the effectiveness of the sanctions regime on the autocratic government. They called for EU sanctions to stay in place, which exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said were critical to “enabling democratic transition and ensuring accountability”.
Lukashenko has denied holding political prisoners, instead saying the people in his prisons were “bandits” and opponents of the state. Belarusian human rights group Viasna, which is banned in the country, said 1,227 political prisoners remain in jail.
Coale, in statements published by Belarus’s state media, said that Lukashenko could help assist in negotiations with Putin. The Trump administration has been engaged in mediation efforts between Russia and Ukraine in an effort to reach an end to the war in Ukraine.
“Your president has a long history with president Putin and has the ability to advise him. This is very useful in this situation. They are longtime friends and have the necessary level of relationship to discuss such issues,” Coale said, according to state news agency Belta.
