US special envoy John Coale announced that 25 people were released from Belarusian prisons in exchange for the lifting of US sanctions on two Belarusian companies following talks with the country’s longtime authoritarian leader, Aleksandr Lukashenko.
“25 prisoners are free today!” Coale wrote on X on September 16.
"We agreed to an interim deal, and as a show of goodwill Belarus will release 25 people and in exchange the United States will lift sanctions on two companies," he added in comments to reporters in the Belarusian capital, Minsk.
The US envoy has been negotiating with Lukashenko since last year, with the talks leading to the release of some 500 people in return for an easing of Washington’s sanctions against Belarus.
In the latest such effort, the United States will lift its sanctions on Belarusian paint manufacturer Lakokraska and forestry sector group Bellesbumprom, Coale told the state news agency BelTA.
The United States and the European Union hit Lukashenko and his government with major sanctions in the wake of the 2020 presidential election, in which Lukashenko, in power since 1994, claimed victory.
Further restrictions were imposed in 2022 after Minsk allowed Moscow to use Belarusian territory as a launchpad for its invasion of Ukraine.
“We will continue to improve US-Belarus relations and are working to secure the release of more people in the very near future,” he wrote on X, having earlier told BelTA that “additional sanctions relief” would continue to be granted in exchange.
Coale later told Reuters in an interview that he expects to return to Belarus in about one month's time, possibly to announce the release of many more prisoners.
"I hope hundreds (are released). I don't know. That's my hope," Coale was quoted as saying.
"I'm confident that we'll get a lot more out."
Following the latest round of diplomacy, exiled Belarusian opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya wrote on X that she was “happy for every person who has finally found themselves free today” and “for their families and loved ones who have been waiting for this day.”
“Every person released is a victory. So today’s release is another humanitarian result,” she said, adding, however, that “it is far from the end of this process,” with hundreds of other prisoners remaining behind bars in Belarus.
According to earlier estimates by the Viasna rights group, which monitors arrests and is banned in Belarus, the country was still holding more than 900 political prisoners, even as Washington negotiated the release of hundreds of detainees beginning in 2025.
While Belarusian opposition figures have largely welcomed US efforts to secure the release of prisoners, experts say Lukashenko is using the issue to “legitimize” his rule internationally and is arresting more people to replace those freed, an assertion denied by the Belarusian leader during his talks with Coale in Minsk.
“For Lukashenko, the most important thing is...strengthening his political agency,” Vadim Mozheiko, director of the Krakow-based Kosciuszko Institute, told Current Time on September 16, adding that this “is especially important given his lack of domestic legitimacy.”
Separately, Mozheiko pointed out that a “significant proportion of those released were forcibly deported from Belarus,” a move he described as “yet another form of repression.”
A September 15 report by the UN experts said that "Belarusian authorities are using the country’s criminal justice system as an instrument of repression, systematically targeting and persecuting individuals deemed to oppose the government."
"Plainclothes officers routinely detain individuals they label as critical of the Government without warrants, subject them to beatings and stress positions, deny access to lawyers, and force them to record humiliating 'repentance' videos under duress and threats against their families," it added.
After Coale released a picture of the people freed on September 16, RFE/RL’s Belarus Service identified several prominent figures among them who had been arrested amid Belarus’s crackdown on anti-government protests and in the years that followed.
Among them was Lyudmila Chekina, the director-general of Belarus’s popular news portal Tut.by, which was shut down amid pressure from the country’s authorities in 2021.
She was sentenced to 12 years in prison on various charges, including “harming the national security of the Republic of Belarus.”
Paval Belavus, a noted art manager and founder of a popular shop selling Belarusian national symbols, was also released. He had previously been sentenced to 13 years in prison on high treason and other charges.
