The history of US and EU sanctions against Belarus has traveled a long road — from targeted, situational restrictions over human rights violations to a full-scale economic and political blockade. The Belarusian regime faced its harshest sanctions over the systematic falsification of presidential elections. The forced landing of a Ryanair flight in 2021 pushed the West to move beyond compiling individual blacklists toward imposing sectoral sanctions on the oil refining and potash industries. By becoming a staging ground for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Belarus cemented its status as a co-aggressor. Additional sanctions were imposed on Minsk, and its financial isolation deepened further.
Despite facing extensive sectoral restrictions itself, Belarus plays a significant role in helping the Kremlin circumvent Western sanctions. Exploiting loopholes in the sanctions regime, it helped create fictitious re-export chains for dual-use goods. With no customs restrictions within the Union State, Belarusian shell companies purchased high-tech components, microchips, and machinery from the EU and the US — ostensibly for domestic industrial needs — which then flowed freely into Russia. Belarus also established a “parallel import” scheme for luxury cars and consumer electronics destined for Russia, allowing Western brands to formally comply with sanctions while retaining access to Russian consumers.
Belarus actively facilitates the “legalization” of Russian raw materials: petroleum products and timber from Russia receive Belarusian certificates of conformity, enabling them to enter European markets under the guise of goods not subject to direct bans.
Belarus is a textbook dictatorship, with all power concentrated in a single pair of hands. Alexander Lukashenko has always been characterized by a degree of flexibility — and despite his complete political loyalty to the Kremlin, he has never abandoned the search for additional leverage outside the “Union State,” positioning himself as a mediator in contexts ranging from Ukrainian-Russian negotiations to dealings with Iran. As it turned out, the Middle Eastern conflict presented the Belarusian dictator with precisely the kind of opportunity he was looking for — and he wasted no time seizing it.
Today, Belarus is serving as a venue for negotiations between the US and Iran. Lukashenko is leveraging his history of relations with Tehran to present himself as an effective intermediary. So eager was he to strike a “great deal” with US President Donald Trump that he agreed to amnesty political prisoners and make several other concessions as conditions set by the American side. Between February and March 2026, several dozen political prisoners convicted for their participation in the 2020 protests were released. The Belarusian authorities officially framed this as “pardons on health grounds,” but in practice it was compliance with State Department requirements for continuing the dialogue. The released oppositionists were banned from using bank cards and SIM cards and warned that any violation — even minor ones, such as consuming alcohol — could result in re-imprisonment.
Those oppositionists remaining in prison have been permitted rare contact with lawyers or to receive packages — a signal that Minsk is prepared to discuss their future and possible deportation abroad.
The war with Iran has led to a near-complete halt in nitrogen fertilizer exports from Gulf countries, causing a global shortage and a sharp spike in prices that has hit American farmers — a key constituency for Donald Trump.
On March 26, the US president’s administration officially eased sanctions against Belarus’s potash sector, specifically targeting Belaruskali and the Belarusian Potash Company. Trump stated directly that this was necessary to “support American farmers” who need fertilizer ingredients that have become inaccessible due to the conflict with Iran.
Belarus and Iran have a coordinated military cooperation plan for 2026, and Lukashenko is using this as leverage. In exchange for the lifting of sanctions on its financial sector and an invitation to visit the United States, Minsk may promise to restrict the transfer of certain dual-use technologies to Iran or to deny its territory for Iranian sanctions-evasion logistics schemes.
It would not be Lukashenko if he did not frame all these concessions as reversible. He has reserved the right to return to a hardline position if the “great deal” fails to deliver quick economic dividends — namely, the lifting of sanctions on Belarusian potash — or if pressure from Vladimir Putin threatens his hold on power.
For Trump, the “Iranian factor” is above all a matter of oil prices and market stability. To compensate for the energy and resource shortfall caused by the war with Iran, he is prepared to overlook the authoritarian nature of Lukashenko’s regime, provided it guarantees a stable supply of raw materials to global markets at acceptable prices.
The Belarusian president skillfully seized the moment when American food security interests outweighed democratic values. The release of 250 political prisoners served merely as a formal pretext for lifting sanctions; the real reason is the United States’ critical need for resources that have been blocked by the Iranian conflict.
If the US proceeds with further agreements with Minsk, Belarus could become an even larger channel for Russia to circumvent sanctions and a hub for financial operations serving the interests of both regimes. The erosion of the sanction’s regime would mean strengthening the economic resilience of Russia and its satellite, Belarus. Lifting sanctions on Belarusian potash activates logistics and transit networks, creating risks of restoring transport corridors through Belarus.
In any case, there should be no illusions about a radical shift in Minsk’s course. Despite the diplomatic track with the Americans, Lukashenko is simultaneously meeting with Kim Jong-un, and a full break with the Kremlin is not on the table — Belarus has become far too dependent on Russia for that.
All of this opens a window for Lukashenko’s rehabilitation and emergence from isolation. If this trajectory continues without firm US demands to end political repression, abandon sanctions-evasion schemes, and genuinely reduce dependence on Moscow — it may become not a tool of pressure on the regime, but a mechanism for its legitimization. And that represents a threat not only to the Belarusian opposition and political prisoners, but also a path toward the collapse of the sanctions architecture that the West has worked so long and so hard to build against Russia and its allies.