Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko freed 123 prisoners yesterday including Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski and leading opposition figure Maria Kalesnikava after two days of talks with an envoy for US President Donald Trump.
In return, the US agreed to lift sanctions on Belarusian potash. Potash is a key component in fertilisers, and the former Soviet state is a leading global producer.
The prisoner release was by far the biggest by Lukashenko since Trump’s administration opened talks this year with the veteran authoritarian leader, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Western governments had previously shunned him because of his crushing of dissent and backing for Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Nine of the released prisoners left Belarus for Lithuania and 114 were taken to Ukraine, officials said.
Bialiatski, co-winner of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, is a human rights campaigner who fought for years on behalf of political prisoners before becoming one himself. He had been in jail since July 2021.
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