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Belarusian Prisoner Releases: The Dictator’s Gambit

The regime is probing to see if the West will make concessions. There are good grounds for skepticism. The release from jail of the opposition leader Siarhei Tsikhanouski and five other Belarusian political prisoners in June offered a rare moment of hope in a country that has had few reasons for optimism since the brutal repression of 2020.

Tsikhanouski, a popular blogger, was arrested as he prepared to challenge Aliaksandr Lukashenka in that year’s presidential election. Sentenced to 18 years on politically motivated charges, he became one of the most recognizable faces of a repressed democratic uprising. His wife, Sviatlana, ran in his place and is widely believed to have won the vote. She now leads Belarus’s democratic forces in exile.

His release followed a five-hour meeting in Minsk between Lukashenka and General Keith Kellogg, President Trump’s US envoy for Ukraine.

But this was no gesture of goodwill. It was the latest tactical move in a slow and calculated game — one aimed at regaining legitimacy, extracting sanctions relief, and carving out room for maneuver in an increasingly asymmetric relationship with the Kremlin.

For the US administration, the release fits the narrative of making deals. While his promise to end the war in Ukraine has proved extremely hard to fulfill, his team has built a record on hostage diplomacy — securing releases in Venezuela, Gaza, and now Belarus. Tsikhanouski’s case can be spun as another success. For Lukashenka, delivering such results is a route back to relevance.

But the 70-year-old dictator is not softening. He is seeking to convert narrow, symbolic gestures into a strategic advantage. Tsikhanouski’s release comes against the backdrop of unrelenting repression: nearly 1,200 political prisoners remain behind bars, among them Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski. Arrests continue weekly. Detainees are often held incommunicado in inhumane conditions. Tsikhanouski’s account portrays exactly this  — long stretches of cold, hunger, illness, and isolation, without access to lawyers, family contact, or medical care.

Tsikhanouski’s release is therefore not a signal of liberalization. Lukashenka is probing to see how easily Western governments can be induced to re-engage. He is ready to offer small, reversible gestures — pulling troops back from the EU border, inviting NATO observers to September’s Zapad 2025 military exercises, or even floating a role in Ukraine peace talks, citing his earlier role in the failed Minsk process. None of this reflects a break with the Kremlin, but it may buy him time and space — especially if the West proves eager to declare progress.

That would devalue the effectiveness of the sanctions and prevent further releases of political prisoners.

Sanctions have hit Belarus hard. Once the world’s second-largest exporter of potash fertilizers, Belarus has seen its global market share drop from 20% to just under 10%. The industry once provided a fifth of export earnings and nearly 10% of GDP. Today, Belarusian exports are routed almost entirely through Russia, with up to 90% dependency on Russian infrastructure or markets.

Sanctions remain one of the West’s few levers. The EU is right to hold the line on its position: no sanctions relief without the full release of political prisoners, and a demonstrable end to repression. But it could also go further by setting out conditions for gradual relief tied to strict, verifiable benchmarks, with automatic snapback provisions if repression resumes. Without such mechanisms, diplomacy risks becoming symbolic, leaving Lukashenka with concessions but little change on the ground.

The risk is not only in what Lukashenka gains, but in what the West may lose. Premature engagement risks demoralizing Belarus’s battered but resilient opposition. It undermines solidarity with those who remain behind bars. And it risks reinforcing the perception — both in Minsk and Moscow — that repression can be bought off.

The release of Tsikhanouski is not the beginning of change in Belarus. Lukashenka is playing for time, status, and survival. The unresolved trauma of the 2020 protests has defined his rule, which now depends entirely on coercion. Belarus remains more repressive than Russia, and its civil society more thoroughly dismantled, while its population is strongly opposed to the war in Ukraine.

The West must not mistake signals for shifts. Lukashenka’s regime understands one language: strength. It is not reforming. It is negotiating.