{"id":237539,"date":"2025-02-12T20:24:10","date_gmt":"2025-02-12T20:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/12\/belarus-frees-an-american-and-2-others-as-it-tries-to-thaw-relations\/"},"modified":"2025-02-12T20:24:10","modified_gmt":"2025-02-12T20:24:10","slug":"belarus-frees-an-american-and-2-others-as-it-tries-to-thaw-relations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/12\/belarus-frees-an-american-and-2-others-as-it-tries-to-thaw-relations\/","title":{"rendered":"Belarus Frees an American and 2 Others as It Tries to Thaw Relations"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i3.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/02\/12\/multimedia\/12belarus-us-vljk\/12belarus-us-vljk-facebookJumbo.jpg?ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Belarus Frees an American and 2 Others as It Tries to Thaw Relations\" title=\"Belarus Frees an American and 2 Others as It Tries to Thaw Relations\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-0\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Belarus, Russia\u2019s closest ally, has released an American prisoner and two others from jail, an exiled opposition group said on Wednesday, in the latest sign that the autocratic Belarusian president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, was looking for ways to <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/12\/24\/world\/europe\/belarus-lukashenko-putin-west-sanctions.html\" title=\"\">improve frozen relations with the West<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The releases, announced by an opposition group led by Svetlana Tikhanovskaya in Lithuania, a neighbor of Belarus, followed what Western diplomats said was a secret visit on Wednesday to Minsk, the Belarusian capital, by a U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state, <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.state.gov\/biographies\/christopher-w-smith\/\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Christopher W. Smith<\/a>. The group did not identify the American who was freed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The State Department did not respond to messages seeking comment on whether Mr. Smith had traveled to Minsk, in what would be the highest-level visit to Belarus by an American official since Mike Pompeo, a secretary of state during President Trump\u2019s first administration, went there in 2020 seeking to \u201cnormalize\u201d ties.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-1\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Smith, a holdover from the Biden administration, last month helped secure the release of another American citizen held in Belarus, <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rferl.org\/a\/anastasia-nuhfer-belarus-texas-putnam\/33297624.html\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Anastassia Nuhfer.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-2\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Franak Viacorka, chief of staff to Ms. Tikhanovskaya, said in <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/t.me\/zerkalo_io\/122018\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">a video posted on Telegram<\/a> that he had visited the U.S. embassy in Vilnius, Lithuania, and picked up one of the people he said had been released, Alena Movshuk, whom he described as an activist.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">He did not name the freed American but said the third person set free was Andrey Kuznechyk, a journalist with the Belarus service of Radio Free Europe, an American-funded news organization.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Lithuanian government officials said that an American citizen had on Wednesday entered that Baltic nation from Belarus. They did not give a name, either. They said that Mr. Smith was now in Vilnius and would hold meetings there on Thursday with European diplomats.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Since Mr. Pompeo\u2019s trip to Minsk in February 2020, relations between Belarus and the West have gone from bad to worse, poisoned by Mr. Lukashenko\u2019s <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/11\/14\/world\/europe\/belarus-lukashenko-protests-crackdown.html\" title=\"\">brutal crackdown<\/a> on nationwide street protests following what his opponents and Western governments say was a rigged presidential election in August 2020.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-3\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which was launched in part from Belarusian territory, frayed relations further. The United States shut its embassy in Minsk soon after the start of the invasion.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In recent months, however, a slow but steady stream of prisoners, mostly people jailed for involvement in the 2020 protests, have been released in what analysts and opposition activists see as an effort by Mr. Lukashenko to get his country in from the cold.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Lukashenko, long wary of becoming too dependent on Russia for economic and security support, has a long history of <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/06\/22\/world\/europe\/belarus-lukashenko-russia.html\" title=\"\">maneuvering between East and West<\/a>, a game that ended abruptly after the post-election crackdown in 2020 but which he now appears eager to revive.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">An early opponent in the 2020 race was Sergei Tikhanovsky, but he was arrested shortly after announcing his candidacy and later sentenced to 18 years in prison, where he remains. Ms. Tikhanovskaya, his wife, became a candidate in his place, but she fled the country shortly after the election and was sentenced in absentia to 15 years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">With all of his prominent critics either driven into exile or jailed, and all potential rivals kept off the ballot in a presidential election last month, Mr. Lukashenko <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/01\/26\/world\/europe\/belarus-lukashenko-re-election.html\" title=\"\">cruised to yet another landslide victory<\/a>, his seventh in a row, with 87 percent of the vote \u2014 even more than the 81 percent he claimed in the disputed 2020 election.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/02\/12\/world\/europe\/belarus-prisoner-release.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Belarus, Russia\u2019s closest ally, has released an American prisoner and two others from jail, an exiled opposition group said on Wednesday, in the latest sign that the autocratic Belarusian president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, was looking for ways to improve frozen relations with the West. The releases, announced by an opposition group led by Svetlana Tikhanovskaya [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237540,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/02\/12\/multimedia\/12belarus-us-vljk\/12belarus-us-vljk-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[175986,1147,19560,74806,3096,94326,167181,185165,18167,175988,38257,175987],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237539"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237539"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":237541,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237539\/revisions\/237541"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}