Of the nearly 1,400 political prisoners that the dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko has blocked in since the protests against the cheating choice in Belarus August 2020, 52 has now been released. It happened after a settlement between Lukashenko and Donald Trump, who called Lukashenko “a friend”. The deal included that the United States eases on the sanctions against Belarus, including against the state airline Belavia, and again opens its embassy in Minsk.
The settlement with Trump is an attempt by Lukashenko’s side to break its country’s status as international pariah. He was on the rocker to be overthrown during the popular mass protesters late summer 2020, and then Russian President Vladimir Putin entered as his rescuer, with Russian security police and special troops.
In return, Lukashenko has released important parts of control of Belarus to Moscow. Previously, he presented himself as neutral between Moscow and Kiev, but when Putin triggered the large -scale invasion against Ukraine in February 2022, he opened Belarus’s territory to the Russian military.
The military cooperation between Russia and Belarus has become increasingly denser, and the maneuver Zapad 2025 which began on Friday along NATO’s eastern border is only part of it. The exercise has caused concern in Poland. Prime Minister Donald Tusk fears new Russian provocations and has closed the Polish border with Belarus.
Nobody in Poland has forgotten that the last great Russian -Belarusian war game, Zapad 2021, was used as a springboard for the invasion of Ukraine a few months later.
This year’s Zapad includes exercises with intended efforts with nuclear weapons and the newly developed hypersonic average distance robot Oreshnik. Previously, Belarus was atomic weapon -free, but it was repealed in February 2022. Thus, Russia was able to deploy core battles in the country at the end of 2023.
Now Lukashenko strives for an approach to the West, and uses as many times before the political prisoners as a gear coin. His business deal with Trump must have received green light from Putin, or he has rather been ordered to take that step. It is not illogical, given that Putin himself does everything to normalize relationships with the United States, in order to continue his attack war against Ukraine and at the same time gain relief in the sanctions.
The fact that over 50 political prisoners is released after years of brutal treatment and torture in Lukashenko’s prisons is humanly a relief. Svjatlana Tsichanuskaja, Belarus opposition leader in exile, thanked Donald Trump on Friday for the release of political prisoners.
But at the same time it is clear that Lukashenko’s “gift” has a bitter and international law back. All prisoners were deprived of their passports and banished to neighboring Lithuania. One of them, opposition politician Mikola Statkevich, who was sentenced to 14 years in prison, refused to leave Belarus. He stayed in the border zone, and was then arrested again by masked men and brought back to Minsk.
Another was the journalist IHar Losik, who is now in freedom in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. He has told how the release went: At dawn, he was taken from the isolation cell by prison guards and ordered to pack his things. They put losik in a car, handcuffed and with a bag over his head, and took him to KGB. Then he was driven out of the country.
To Radio Liberty, Losik said: “I am completely shocked, but of course also happy”. But at the same time he is desperate that his wife Daria and the couple’s little daughter remain in Belarus. Several other of the deporters have also been separated from their loved ones.
