Trump’s envoy wins release of 25 Belarus prisoners, expects hundreds more soon

By Andrius Sytas and Mark Trevelyan

VILNIUS, Sept 16 (Reuters) – Belarus freed 25 prisoners on Wednesday in return for a further easing of U.S. sanctions, and U.S. envoy John Coale told Reuters that hundreds more could be released in a month.

The deal was the latest to emerge from a series of negotiations stretching back more than a year between Coale and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Coale has been tasked by President Donald Trump with securing the release of hundreds of people including human rights campaigners, political activists, journalists and lawyers.

The U.S. diplomacy is sensitive because Lukashenko, in charge of the former Soviet state since 1994, has long been shunned by the West for repressing his opponents and supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“This (process) has been very successful. President Trump’s very happy with this,” Coale told Reuters in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, where the freed prisoners were taken.

One of them, Liudmila Chekina, told reporters she was “overwhelmed with emotions” after being released from a 12-year sentence.

“It’s very hard to be in captivity. It’s like being buried alive. Our parents were dying and we couldn’t attend the funeral. Our kids grew up without us,” said Chekina, former head of the online news portal TUT.BY that was banned in 2021.

ENVOY HOPES FOR MORE RELEASES SOON

The figure of 25 releases was much lower than the 250 that Coale negotiated when he last visited Minsk in March.

But the American said in an interview that he expected to return in about a month and hoped at that point that “hundreds” would be freed.

Human rights group Viasna, which is banned in Belarus as an extremist organisation, said many of those released on Wednesday had been serving very long jail terms.

Journalist Andrei Alyaksandrau, freed from a 14-year sentence, told Reuters he was “having some first gasps of free air”.

Also released were his wife Iryna Zlobina, serving nine years, and a trio of musicians, arrested in 2022, whose songs were designated as “extremist materials”.

A source familiar with the situation told Reuters that, in addition to the 25, a significant number of prisoners were expected to be freed and remain inside Belarus.

LUKASHENKO DENIES REPLACING SOME PRISONERS WITH OTHERS

Viasna says Belarus still holds 886 political prisoners, although Lukashenko rejects that label and denies charges by the exiled opposition that he is steadily arresting more people to replace those he releases.

Asked if he was sticking to an earlier prediction that all the prisoners could be freed this year, Coale told Reuters: “Well, I think so. (I’ll) give it a try.”

The 79-year-old has previously admitted to resorting occasionally to crude humour in order to win over Lukashenko, and discreetly emptying his glass on the floor in order to avoid getting drunk at long vodka sessions.

U.S. LIFTS SANCTIONS ON TWO BELARUSIAN COMPANIES

Coale said earlier that the U.S. was lifting sanctions on Lakokraska, a manufacturer of paints and industrial coatings, and Bellesbumprom, a state-owned industrial concern that oversees the forestry, pulp and paper sectors.

He also promised Lukashenko on Tuesday to get U.S. banks to hand back tens of millions of dollars in frozen Belarusian assets.

Coale’s humanitarian efforts have earned gratitude from many Belarusians, but rights groups and opposition politicians say arrests continue and Lukashenko has yet to end repression.

Exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya told reporters: “We understand that Lukashenko releases people not because he is humane. But because people (are) goods for Lukashenko and he wants to sell them as expensive as possible.”

(Reporting by Andrius Sytas and Janis Laizans in Vilnius and Mark Trevelyan in London; Additional reporting by Anton Kolodyazhnyy, Felix Light, Stine Jacobsen and Louise Rasmussen; Writing by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Alex Richardson)