Belarus has freed 123 prisoners, including prominent opposition activist Maria Kolesnikova, after the US agreed to lift sanctions on the Eastern European country.<\/p>\n
Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski is also among those who have been freed following talks in Minsk with US President Donald Trump’s special envoy for Belarus, John Coale.<\/p>\n
The US has agreed to lift sanctions on potash, a key ingredient in fertiliser and an important export for the country whose president, Alexander Lukashenko, is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n
Coale said: “As relations between the two countries normalise, more and more sanctions will be lifted.”<\/p>\n
The EU has not recognised Lukashenko as president.<\/p>\n
Kolesnikova has been in prison since 2020, much of the time in isolation.<\/p>\n
Her sister, Tatiana, who campaigned tirelessly for her release was able to speak to her by video call soon after and confirmed the news to the BBC.<\/p>\n
A group of those released are expected in Lithuania’s capital Vilnius shortly. A crowd is gathering outside the US embassy.<\/p>\n
The deal is a major achievement for Lukashenko and the authoritarian leader will also welcome how the Americans have ended his international isolation.<\/p>\n
As well as the EU, the US did not recognise Lukashenko as president following unfair elections five years ago which led to mass street protests that were brutally suppressed by police.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of people were arrested then \u2013 including Kolesnikova – and the intense political repression has continued.<\/p>\n
Western sanctions were tightened following Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when troops entered via Belarus and missiles were launched from its territory.<\/p>\n
Coale was quoted by Belarusian state media saying that the sanctions on potash would be lifted immediately,<\/p>\n
The US envoy also said he spoke to Lukashenko about Ukraine and what help Minsk could offer in talks with Putin.<\/p>\n
The attempt to engage with Minsk is part of a major shift in US policy, which leaves it very much at odds with Europe \u2013 where the approach is to sanction and isolate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Belarus has freed 123 prisoners, including prominent opposition activist Maria Kolesnikova, after the US agreed to lift sanctions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":342740,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-342739","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/342740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}