Belarus Frees Prominent Political Prisoners as U.S. Lifts Some Trade Sanctions

The release of the prisoners, including a Nobel laureate and two opposition leaders, was part of a monthslong rapprochement between Washington and Minsk.

In the latest step in a growing thaw with the United States, Belarus on Saturday freed more than 100 prisoners, including two opposition leaders and a Nobel laureate, as the Trump administration announced it would lift sanctions on potash fertilizer, one of Belarus’s largest sources of cash.

The deal with the Belarusian strongman Aleksandr G. Lukashenko bears the hallmarks of President Trump’s transactional diplomacy: a focus on trade and a willingness to do business with autocrats in spite of a history of human rights abuses.

While limited, the easing of sanctions represents another in a series of moves toward ending the isolation of Mr. Lukashenko, a tyrant who brutally suppressed a 2020 uprising against a rigged election, manufactured an immigration crisis in Europe in 2021 and allowed Russia to use his country to launch its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It follows a monthslong rapprochement between Washington and Minsk that has seen hundreds of political prisoners freed and the slow restoration of economic ties.

The prisoners were freed after John Coale, the U.S. special envoy for Belarus, held talks with Mr. Lukashenko on Friday and Saturday at his sumptuous palace in Minsk, the capital.

Maria Kolesnikova and Viktor Babariko, two of Belarus’s top opposition leaders, were among a group of political prisoners who were freed at the Belarus-Ukraine border, according to the Ukrainian authorities.

Video shared on Saturday by the Belarusian news media operating in exile showed Ms. Kolesnikova, near what looked like a border crossing with Ukraine, hugging Mr. Babariko and Maksim Znak, who was a key member of their campaign against Mr. Lukashenko in 2020.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy to Belarus, which is currently in Vilnius, confirmed that 123 prisoners, many jailed for their political activities, had been freed. Among them were citizens of Australia, Britain, Lithuania, Poland and the United States. Mr. Babariko’s son, who was involved in his father’s campaign, remains in prison.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Lukashenko said via text message that the majority of the prisoners were sent to Ukraine because “according to the agreement, captured Belarusians and wounded Russians would be released,” adding that “this was Ukraine’s request.”

The Ukrainian authorities said they had received 114 freed prisoners, who would be given medical checkups before being sent on to Lithuania and Poland.

Ales Bialiatski, a human rights activist who shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, was also freed, along with eight others who arrived in Vilnius, the capital of neighboring Lithuania, on Saturday.

The authorities in Ukraine said five Ukrainians and 104 Belarusians had arrived on Saturday on Ukrainian territory, where they were welcomed by Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Kyiv’s military intelligence agency.

The meetings between Mr. Coale and Mr. Lukashenko — and the exchange of such high-profile political prisoners — represent a slow but steady thawing of relations between Washington and Belarus, a Russian vassal state.

Mr. Coale told journalists on Saturday that the talks had been “very productive.”

“We talked about the future, about how to move forward on a path of rapprochement between the United States and Belarus to normalize relations,” he said. “That’s our goal.”

Mr. Lukashenko has a long history of playing Russia against the West to bolster Belarusia’s sovereignty and extract concessions from the opposing sides. That strategy went into eclipse after the 2020 uprising against what critics called a sham election, which he put down with beatings, torture and widespread arrests. In recent years he had been doing the Kremlin’s bidding, which included allowing Russia to station tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian soil.

In response, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. ordered a series of sanctions on Belarus, covering banks and other financial institutions, exports like potash, petroleum, wood, gold and diamonds and Mr. Lukashenko himself and his associates.

But Mr. Trump has taken a different approach to autocratic leaders around the world, and on Friday, Mr. Lukashenko was fulsome in his praise.

“They say Trump loves flattery,” Mr. Lukashenko told Mr. Coale on Friday during a meeting in the Belarusian leader’s vast residence. “But I’m not here for flattery. I want to say that I really like his actions lately.”

Before 2022, Belarus, a landlocked country, used the port of Klaipeda in Lithuania to export its potash. When the war in Ukraine led the Lithuanian government to cut off that export route, Minsk was pushed further into Russia’s orbit, giving Moscow more control over global supplies of the crucial fertilizer.

Currently, most Belarusian potash is exported through Russia, a route that has been far more costly for Belaruskali, the state-owned potash company that produces around 20 percent of the world supply. The company is Belarus’s single largest taxpayer.

The exact details of the sanctions relief announced on Saturday and of possible new export routes for Belarusian potash have not been announced publicly.

For years, there have been disagreements among pro-democracy Belarusians and their Western allies about how to approach Mr. Lukashenko’s government, with some advocating sanctions that would strangle Minsk’s coffers and opposing the release of political prisoners in exchange for sanctions relief.

But by last year, the Biden administration acknowledged that the policy of maximum isolation had not loosened Mr. Lukashenko’s grip on power. Just weeks after Mr. Trump was inaugurated, a top State Department official quietly visited Belarus to meet with its strongman.

Minsk freed at least 430 prisoners between July 2024 and last month, with the Trump administration brokering the release of about 70 of them. But the pace of political repression in Belarus has not abated, and more than 1,200 political prisoners remain behind bars, according to Viasna, a Belarusian human rights group led by Mr. Bialiatski.

Freed prisoners have spoken of being deprived of adequate food and medical care. Sergei Tikhanovsky, a Belarusian opposition blogger, was barred from communicating with his family for years during his incarceration, and he lost 132 pounds while behind bars.

Mr. Coale’s latest visit to Belarus, population 9.5 million, was at least the fourth this year. In September, Washington promised to lift sanctions on Belavia, Belarus’s national airline, and to explore reopening an embassy in Minsk.

Some in the Belarusian opposition welcomed the U.S. policy shift.

“I don’t think it’s possible to bring regime change in Belarus with sanctions,” said Ivan Kravtsov, a key adviser to Mr. Babariko. “Now the wind is changing, so we need to catch the wind and get Belarus out of isolation to ensure its long-term development.”

The negotiations are beneficial to both the United States and Mr. Lukashenko, who seeks more room to maneuver after becoming even more reliant on Moscow in 2020, said Piotr Krawczyk, who led Poland’s Foreign Intelligence Agency from 2016 until 2022.

“High-level U.S. visits to Minsk and the renewal of political dialogue serve both to bolster Lukashenko’s bargaining position vis-à-vis the Kremlin and to signal that Belarus has alternatives to exclusive dependence on Russia,” Mr. Krawczyk said.

Washington wants Belarus to play a more constructive role in international security by halting the flow of illegal migrants on its borders with Poland and Lithuania and cracking down on the illegal smuggling balloons that have alarmed Vilnius in the context of increased Russian-orchestrated hybrid threats across Europe.

The negotiations between the Trump administration and Mr. Lukashenko’s government come amid a flurry of diplomatic activity to end the war in Ukraine. Mr. Coale told journalists on Saturday that he had also discussed the war with the Belarusian leader.

Mr. Lukashenko, whose country is wedged between Ukraine and Russia, has consistently sought to involve himself in the negotiations to end the war, and Washington has said that it has used him as a channel for messages to the Russian leader, Vladimir V. Putin.

“They are longstanding friends and have the necessary level of relationship to discuss such issues,” Mr. Coale told reporters on Saturday. “Naturally, President Putin may accept some advice and not others. This is a way to help the process.”

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