The humanitarian move was part of a wider deal with Washington that lifted sanctions on Belarus’ state airline
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko pardoned 52 prisoners as part of a deal with US President Donald Trump. In return, Washington lifted sanctions on the national carrier Belavia.
Lukashenko met with Trump’s envoy John Coale, who led the US delegation to Minsk on Thursday.
”If Donald insists that he is ready to take in all these released prisoners, God bless you, let’s try to work out a global deal, as Mr. Trump likes to say, a big deal,” Lukashenko said during the meeting.
As part of the agreement, according to Coale, Trump instructed him to “immediately” lift sanctions on Belavia. Coale also said that Washington wanted to reopen its embassy in Minsk, Belta news agency reported.
Minsk said the pardons were granted “based on the principles of humanism” and included 14 foreign nationals from countries such as Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Germany, France, and the UK. Also freed was opposition activist Nikolay Statkevich, who had been serving a 14-year sentence for organizing the 2020 mass protests.
Since July 2024, Belarusian authorities have pardoned nearly 300 people, including imprisoned US citizens and another prominent opposition figure, Sergey Tikhanovsky. His release came after Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy, visited Belarus and met with Lukashenko in June. Kellogg was the highest-ranking US official in years to visit Minsk.
Tikhanovsky, an opposition blogger, was barred from running for president in 2020 and ultimately sentenced to 18 years for organizing mass rioting over what the opposition claimed was widespread election fraud. Minsk insisted that the unrest was orchestrated by the US and its European “satellites,” as well as neighboring Ukraine.
The West has since imposed several rounds of sanctions on Belarus, including after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. The Biden administration sanctioned Belavia in 2023 over alleged election fraud and what it described as Minsk’s “complicity” in the hostilities.
