Belarus frees imprisoned opposition leader after US intervention

Telegraph

3 hours ago

Belarus has freed Syarhei Tsikhanouski, one of the country's opposition leaders, in a deal brokered by US special envoy Keith Kellogg in Minsk.
In what is widely being seen as an attempt to build relations with the West, Mr Tsikhanouski was one of 14 Belarusian opposition figures freed from jail on Saturday after Mr Kellogg met president Alexander Lukashenko.
Ihar Karnei, a longtime Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty correspondent serving a three-year term on charges of extremism, and Allan Roio, an Estonian national who was detained last year after he established an NGO to raise funds for Belarusian refugees, were also freed.
Mr Tsikhanouski is the husband of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Belarus' most prominent opposition leader who opposes the regime from exile in Lithuania.
On her official Telegram channel, Ms Tsikhanouskaya shared a video of her husband disembarking a white minibus, writing 'what our family dreamed of for these five years and what we all worked for, from the moment of his arrest, has happened.'
Mr Tsikhanouski, a popular anti-regime blogger and activist known for his anti-Lukashenko slogan 'stop the cockroach', was arrested and detained after announcing plans to run against Lukashenko in the 2020 election.
Following her husband's arrest, Ms Tsikhanouskaya ran in his stead, but official results of the election which many saw as a sham handed a sixth term to Mr Lukashenko and sparked the biggest protests in the country's history. More than 35,000 people were detained and all political opposition was gutted.
Mr Lukashenko, who extended his rule to a seventh term in January of this year, has pardoned almost 300 people including imprisoned US citizens since July 2024, in what some have described as an attempt to heal his relationship with the West.
Mr Kellogg was welcomed to Lukashenko's personal residence when he visited Minsk earlier this week in the highest-level contact between Washington and the Belarusian regime since the crackdown on post-election protests in 2020.
'You have made a lot of noise in the world with your arrival,' Lukashenko said, adding that he hoped the conversation would be 'very sincere and open.'
Mr Lukashenko's press secretary told Russian state media on Saturday that he had freed the 14 prisoners following a request from Donald Trump.
It is not yet clear whether Mr Kellogg's visit will lead to the lifting of US sanctions against Minsk.
Many other political prisoners, among them Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski, Lukashenko rival Viktar Babaryka and political activist Maria Kalesnikava, remain behind bars.