Lukashenko pardons 123 prisoners after the withdrawal of sanctions on Belarus, including a Nobel Peace Prize winner

“The Republic of Belarus has made the decision to pardon 123 citizens of different countries convicted (…) for commit crimes of different types as espionage, terrorism and extremism,” the presidential press office informed the agency BELT.

The note emphasizes that the decision “is framed in the agreements reached with the president of the United States, Donald Trump”, whose emissary, John Coleheld consultations between this Saturday and Friday with Lukashenko en Minsk.

Furthermore, the statement adds that the measure responds “to the cancellation of the illegal sanctions against the Belarusian potassium sector adopted by the Administration of the previous US president, Joe Biden“.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski and eight other prisoners are already in Lithuania, while a larger group went to Ukraine, according to the US embassy in Vilnius.

In total, since last month the Belarusian leader has pardoned 156 citizens of countries such as United States, United Kingdom, Ukraine, Australia, Japan, Lithuania and Latvia.

The measure, according to the official note, is aimed at accelerating the positive dynamic in relations with the country’s partners and for the sake of stabilizing the situation in Europa.

Shortly before the release, Cole announced the lifting of sanctions on that country’s potassium, introduced by Washington in 2021. In September, USA has already lifted sanctions against the Belarusian state airline, Belaviasanctioned in 2022.

Normalization between both countries began in August, when Lukashenko spoke by phone with the American president, who asked his Belarusian counterpart release all political prisoners after the release from prison of a group of dissidents last June, which included the opposition leader, Serguéi Tijanovski.

Belarus, country chaired by Lukashenko since 1994has been subject to sanctions since the violent repression of massive opposition protests against the 2020 electoral fraud, measures that multiplied with Minsk’s open support for the Russian military campaign in Ukraine two years later.