{"id":346487,"date":"2025-12-13T14:14:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T14:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/346487\/"},"modified":"2025-12-13T14:14:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T14:14:07","slug":"belarus-frees-123-prisoners-as-us-lifts-sanctions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/346487\/","title":{"rendered":"Belarus frees 123 prisoners as US lifts sanctions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">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<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski is also among those who have been freed following talks in Minsk with US President Donald Trump&#8217;s special envoy for Belarus, John Coale.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">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<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Coale said: &#8220;As relations between the two countries normalise, more and more sanctions will be lifted.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">The EU has not recognised Lukashenko as president.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Kolesnikova has been in prison since 2020, much of the time in isolation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">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<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">A group of those released are expected in Lithiana&#8217;s capital Vilnius shortly. A crowd is gathering outside the US embassy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Belarus has freed 123 prisoners, including prominent opposition activist Maria Kolesnikova, after the US agreed to lift sanctions&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":{"0":"post-346487","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}