Belarus Frees Nobel Prize Winner, Key Opposition Figures in US-Brokered Deal

Belarus has freed 123 political prisoners in an unprecedented deal brokered by the United States.

The releases were carried out under “agreements reached with U.S. President Donald Trump and at his request,” Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s office said in a statement posted on its official Telegram channel on Dec. 13.

It is also tied to the lifting of U.S. sanctions on Belarus’s potash industry, as well as Washington’s commitment to remove other sanctions, the statement said.

Lukashenko, who has been in power in Belarus since 1994, was re-elected to a sixth term in 2020 in an election widely condemned by the opposition and Western governments as rigged. The reelection sparked mass nationwide protests that were met with a sweeping security crackdown, during which thousands of Lukashenko’s opponents, critics, and protesters were jailed.

In 2021, citing a “fraudulent Belarusian election” and the ensuing crackdown on dissidents, the Biden administration added dozens of individuals and companies tied to the Lukashenko government to the U.S. Treasury Department’s blacklist. Among the most prominent entities sanctioned was state-owned Belaruskali OAO, one of the world’s largest producers of potash fertilizer.

Lukashenko’s office said it welcomed the lifting of what it called “illegal” Biden-era sanctions and described the broader rollback of restrictions as entering a “practical phase.”

Among those released on Dec. 13 are opposition leader Maria Kalesnikava, former presidential candidate Viktar Babaryka, and Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights activist Ales Bialiatski. All three were members of the Coordination Council, a pro-democracy group pushing for a peaceful transfer of power, and became the center of the post-2020 election protest movement.

“I am sincerely grateful to everyone involved, to all the people who are part of this chain,” Kalesnikava said in a video shared by Babaryka on X.

“I wholeheartedly welcome all further steps and support every stage of the process that has begun and that we are all very much looking forward to.”

Kalesnikava had led Babaryka’s 2020 election campaign before both were imprisoned.

Ukraine will facilitate the transfer of the freed prisoners to European Union territory. Ukraine shares a northern border with Belarus, a border that Russia used to launch part of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

“The released citizens of Belarus, after receiving the necessary medical care and at their request, will be delivered to Poland and Lithuania,” Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said in a statement. The agency added that the group also includes Ukrainian citizens who had been held in Belarus.

“We express our gratitude to the United States of America and President Donald Trump for the productive work in returning civilian and military Ukrainians from Belarus and Russia,” the statement said.

According to Lukashenko’s office, the released prisoners also include citizens of the United Kingdom, the United States, Lithuania, Latvia, Australia, and Japan.

Including a batch released at the end of November, Belarus said the total number of individuals pardoned under the process now stands at 156.