VILNIUS, (Reuters) – Siarhei Tsikhanouski, a leading Belarus opposition figure, was freed yesterday after more than five years in prison, in the most significant move so far by President Alexander Lukashenko to try to ease his isolation from the West.
The 46-year-old was driven across the border into Lithuania for an emotional reunion with his wife Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the leader of the exiled Belarus opposition.
The Lithuanian government said 13 other prisoners were also released and taken there following talks between Lukashenko and U.S. special envoy Keith Kellogg. In total, five Belarusians were freed along with three Poles, two Latvians, two Japanese citizens, one Estonian and one Swede.
Tsikhanouski was seen emerging from a van with a shaven head, smiling and immediately stepping up to hug his wife in a long embrace, a video released by her office showed.
“It’s hard to describe the joy in my heart,” she said.
Franak Viacorka, Tsikhanouskaya’s chief political adviser, told Reuters that Tsikhanouski had lost weight and his health suffered. He said he “looks like a different person”, but was in good spirits and had joked with U.S. officials.
Viacorka said Tsikhanouski had described “horrible things that happened to him, but he’s not broken… He wants to continue fighting.”
In a post on X, Tsikhanouskaya thanked U.S. President Donald Trump, as well as Kellogg and others for their efforts to secure her husband’s release.
Lukashenko has been shunned by the West for years after brutally crushing pro-democracy demonstrations in 2020 and then allowing Russian President Vladimir Putin, his close ally, to launch part of his 2022 invasion of Ukraine from Belarusian territory.
In the past year, he has freed more than 300 prisoners in what political analysts see as the start of an attempt to restore relations with Western governments and seek an easing of international sanctions against Belarus. Opposition politician Maria Kalesnikava and Nobel peace prize winner Ales Bialiatski are the most prominent of those who remain behind bars.
“We’re not done,” Tsikhanouskaya wrote, calling for the release of a further 1,150 prisoners.
Lukashenko issued pardons for all those released on Saturday in response to a U.S. request, his spokeswoman Natalya Eismont said. In a statement, she said the Belarusians who were freed had been “convicted of extremist and terrorist activity”.
She said the decision to release Tsikhanouski was “taken by the president strictly on humanitarian considerations with the aim of family reunification”.
Eismont said Kellogg’s talks with Lukashenko had begun on Friday evening and lasted 6-1/2 hours over dinner, covering the Ukraine conflict, the Middle East, relations between Russia, Belarus and China, and sanctions policy.
“It was night when it ended,” she said. “The subjects discussed were as current as can be imagined. They talked about things that concern the entire world.”
Reuters reported on Tuesday that Kellogg, the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Belarus in years, saw his mission as one that could help jump-start peace talks aimed at ending Russia’s war against Ukraine.
