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13-09-2025
MINSK: Belarus has released 52 prisoners following mediation by the United States, which has promised to grant Minsk sanctions relief.
Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said on Thursday that the prisoners, along with the US delegation, had crossed into Lithuania.
“No man left behind! 52 prisoners safely crossed the Lithuanian border from Belarus today, leaving behind barbed wire, barred windows and constant fear,” he wrote on social media.
US President Donald Trump had called on Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, to release detainees whom the US leader has described as “hostages”. Belarus later confirmed their release.
In return for Lukashenko’s gesture, Washington will grant sanctions relief to Belarus’s national airline Belavia, allowing it to service and buy components for its fleet, which includes Boeing aircraft, the US embassy spokesperson in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius said.
Sanctions relief
It was the biggest batch of prisoners yet pardoned by Lukashenko, who is seeking to repair relations with the United States after years of isolation and sanctions on his former Soviet state but it was far short of the 1,300 or 1,400 prisoners whose release Trump had called for in a conversation with Lukashenko last month, as well as in subsequent social media posts.
Those released include Ihar Losik, 33, a journalist sentenced in 2021 to 15 years in a penal colony on charges of inciting hatred and organizing riots, the Belarus affairs section of the US embassy in Vilnius said.
The embassy could not immediately confirm whether prominent critics of Lukashenko’s decades-old rule, such as human rights campaigner Ales Bialiatski, co-winner of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, were among those released.
Belarusian veteran dissident Mikola Statkevich was among the 52 political prisoners, according to rights group Vyasna.
“Among those released today is Mikola Statkevich,” it said on Telegram, adding that the 2010 presidential candidate had been sentenced to 14 years following the protests after the contested presidential elections of 2020.
EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas announced that an EU staff member was among the released prisoners, thanking “US partners for their efforts”.
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, leader of the exiled Belarus opposition whose husband, Siarhei, was released from jail in June, said Thursday’s release covered only 4 percent of those designated as political prisoners, and did not signal any real change of policy by Lukashenko.
“We welcome their release, but in essence, this is a trade in human lives, people who should never have been imprisoned in the first place,” Tsikhanouskaya said in a statement released to the media in which she urged the European Union to maintain sanctions on Belarus until democracy is established.
US envoy John Coale, who has been involved in the negotiations with Lukashenko, said he hoped for the release within a short time of all of the 1,400 Belarusian prisoners that Trump has described as “hostages”.
“Our mission is to get them all out now,” Coale told media. “Eventually, hopefully within a short period of time everybody will be out,” he said.
Belarus’s state news agency BelTA said those released included 14 foreign nationals from Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, France, the United Kingdom and Germany. (Int’l News Desk)
