The release of 52 political prisoners came after another visit to Minsk by John Coale, an American lawyer close to Donald Trump who has occasionally been dispatched abroad as an informal envoy to secure diplomatic wins — a role that fits Trump’s preference for personal deal-making over formal diplomacy. In return, the US eased sanctions on the Belarusian state airline.
Those freed included nine journalists, along with civic and political activists and several European nationals. Absent, however, were the most recognisable opposition heavyweights: Viktar Babaryka, the former banker and government critic, and Maria Kalesnikava, who became a symbol of defiance in 2020 when she tore up her passport to resist forced exile. Many of those released had been held incommunicado, while denied family contact and medical care.
This was not the first such gesture. In June, Siarhei Tsikhanouski — the blogger whose 2020 arrest sparked mass protests — was freed after five years in detention. Since mid-2024, more than 300 prisoners have been released. Yet “freed” is misleading: almost all were expelled from Belarus as a condition of release, stripped of passports and forced into exile without the means to survive. Civil society has scrambled to support them, but most emerged gaunt, exhausted, and suddenly homeless. Meanwhile, Aliaksandr Lukasehnka’s hostage bank is by no means exhausted — another 1,100-1,200 political prisoners remain behind bars.
Trump has concluded that it is easier to deal with Belarus than with Russia, or brokering peace in Ukraine. Securing the release of detainees gives him a visible win to showcase at home, while Lukashenka relishes the attention. He casts himself as an indispensable interlocutor, hinting at unique access to Vladimir Putin — a performance convincing enough that Trump phoned him before his recent trip to Alaska to meet the Russian leader. However, Lukashenka’s claims of independence are a façade. Since stealing the 2020 election, he has offered Belarusians nothing but deepening dependence on Moscow and an ever-tightening police state. Far from being a sovereign actor, he survives only because Putin allows it. For the Kremlin, Lukashenka is useful precisely because he is weak: he suppresses dissent cheaply, while Russia dictates the country’s strategic course. Not only has Minsk allowed Russian nuclear weapons to be stationed on its territory, but Belarus is a major rear base for Russian attacks on Ukraine and permitted Russian drones to use its airspace to attack Poland in September. Belarus is also deeply dependant on Russian economic aid.
Forced deportation of opponents is central to this model. Just as Putin has exiled critics like Vladimir Kara-Murza, Lukashenka exports dissent across the border. The practice is blatantly unconstitutional: citizens are stripped of their right to remain in their own country.
For the regime, the calculation is simple — the fewer activists and journalists left inside Belarus, the easier it is to keep the streets quiet. Repression continues: human rights
monitors report new politically motivated arrests, with some detainees reportedly sent directly into psychiatric confinement.
Lukashenka craves sanctions relief, and prisoner diplomacy is his currency. The latest deal saw the US ease restrictions on Belavia, the state airline, permitting servicing and parts — a gesture that could create loopholes. Any reprieve for Belarusian firms risks being exploited by Russian counterparts, which are deeply intertwined with them.
Since 2022, Belarus has become a hub for re-exports of restricted technologies into Russia. Investigations show Belarusian companies procuring Western microchips, electronics and machine parts — components for drones and weapons — and funnelling them to Russian buyers. It likewise acts as a key facilitator in sanctions evasion for Kremlin-friendly states like the UAE.
Energy flows reveal similar vulnerabilities. Investigations detail sanctions-busting schemes that disguise Russian origin through third countries, with Belarus appearing in rerouting chains such as processing oil or agri-oil linked to occupied territories.
Lukashenka plays the role of intermediary — offering just enough concessions to argue for sanctions easing while leaving the Kremlin as the ultimate beneficiary. Without careful design, sanctions relief for Minsk becomes sanctions relief for Moscow.
The timing of the prisoner releases was not accidental. Lukashenka knows his concessions land best when paired with reminders of Belarus’s strategic weight.
The Zapad-2025 military exercise has just concluded, though preparations had been underway for months. The drills were smaller than in 2021 — estimates range from 13,000 to 30,000 troops, compared with 200,000 four years ago — but size is not the point. Symbolically, Zapad defines the adversary as the West. Strategically, Moscow has for the first time publicised that the scenario includes procedures for using tactical nuclear weapons, presenting Belarus as a participant in “nuclear sharing.”
In reality, this makes Belarus a nuclear target, without any sovereign control over the weapons on its soil.
Geographically, the drills were concentrated deeper inside Belarus than in 2021, when exercises near Brest and Grodno alarmed NATO. Minsk points to this as restraint, but it reflects something else: Belarus has become a permanent Russian military rear area. Troops no longer need to mass at the frontier; they are already present inside the country.
For Lukashenka, Zapad is propaganda. State television cast the drills as evidence of strength and deterrence. Yet limited surveys show Belarusians strongly oppose nuclear deployment — a sharp contrast with Russia, where nuclear rhetoric finds wider support. The Kremlin benefits from nuclear signalling; Lukashenka shares the risks without the benefits.
The exercises also fit Russia’s wider hybrid playbook. Drone incursions into Polish territory appeared timed to coincide with Zapad, probing NATO’s cohesion and readiness. The deliberate ambiguity of troop rotations — are they temporary or permanent? — itself pressures Poland and Lithuania. Lukashenka has even hinted at “Chinese observers,” eager to show Belarus as a platform not only for Moscow’s confrontation with NATO but also for Beijing’s stake in Eurasian security.
Lukashenka hopes that prisoner releases and selective gestures will bring sanctions relief, the return of Western diplomats, and a veneer of indispensability.
Western policymakers should not be naïve. Calibrated sanctions, tied to reversible licenses, can offer incentives without surrendering leverage. Re-establishing a diplomatic presence is also useful — both to gather intelligence and to maintain contact with ordinary Belarusians — even if it inevitably elevates Lukashenka’s status in their eyes.
But Lukashenka will never pivot West. His survival is now fatally and permanently bound to Putin’s, and his regime offers neither reform nor renewal. Western policy must abandon illusions of his change and invest instead in Belarusians themselves — a society far closer to Europe in its attitudes and aspirations than to Russia.
They, not Lukashenka, are the real contested space. Supporting them is the only path to an independent Belarus and a true security buffer for the West.
Katia Glod is Deputy Head of Foreign Policy at the New Eurasian Strategies Centre and is a Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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