Many of Belarus’s political prisoners have been in jail since Lukashenko brutally stamped out protests in Belarus in 2020, after he claimed victory in presidential elections widely condemned as rigged.
“The Americans are taking a very constructive stance on the so-called political prisoners. We do not need political prisoners or any other prisoners,” Lukashenko was quoted as saying by state news agency Belta.
The 52 prisoners pardoned on Thursday join 314 others released since July 2023 in an attempt to soften Belarus’s relationship with the EU and the US, according to Human Rights Watch.
Another 14 prisoners were pardoned and released in June during the visit of a US special envoy, including Sergei Tikhanovsky, the husband of exiled Belarus opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. Thirteen others were released and forced into exile.
Tikhanovskaya met some of the released prisoners as they crossed the border into neighbouring Lithuania, where President Gitanas Nauseda thanked President Trump for his efforts in freeing them. He said they had left behind “barbed wire, barred windows and constant fear”.
Among the 52 freed were , 69-year-old philosopher Vladimir Matskevich, journalist Igor Losik and senior opposition figure Mikola Statkevich, who was a presidential candidate in 2010.
Fellow opposition official Olga Zazulinskaya wrote on social media that their release was good news for their families and friends but noted that they were obtaining their freedom in exchange for exile, rather than a return home.
In her first words to reporters after her release, former journalist Larissa Shchyrakova said she had in fact served her entire three-year jail term – “and now they’ve expelled me”.
Mikola Statkevich, a veteran dissident, refused to cross into Lithuania and Belarus’s exiled opposition posted pictures of him sitting in no man’s land at the border. Tikhanovskaya said he had reportedly gone back to Belarus and she said “every Belarusian has the right to live without repression and state terror in their own country”.