Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has offered to release 1,300 political prisoners, but only if they leave the country, as he seeks to improve ties with the Trump administration further, The Kyiv Independent reported on August 28.

The latest proposal comes after he released 14 political prisoners last month, including Sergey Tikhanovsky (Siarhei Tsikhanouskiy), the husband of Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya (Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya) who contested the 2020 presidential elections in his stead after he was arrested before the poll.

Tikhanovsky's dramatic release follows a trip to Minsk by US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff to broker a pardon for the popular blogger who challenged Lukashenko in the flawed 2020 presidential elections that ended in the largest mass protests the country has ever seen.

Lukashenko said that he may pardon up to 1,300 political detainees, many of whom were arrested during the protests five years ago, but only if Western nations “take them away.”

As bne IntelliNews reported, relations between the US and Belarus have warmed recently, as Lukashenko tries to develop some leverage in his one-way relation with Russia since the war in Ukraine started and at the same time is seeking some sanctions relief. Trump last talked to Lukashenko in a phone call from Air Force One on his way to the Alaska summit on August 15 to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Lukashenko made the offer to release more prisoners during that call, The Kyiv Independent reports.

During the call, Trump reportedly thanked Lukashenko for releasing 16 prisoners and expressed hope for the release of the remaining 1,300, calling Lukashenko “a highly respected president” in posts on Truth Social.

Trump is keen to improve relations with Russia and style himself as a peacekeeper in a bid to win a Nobel Prize, according to many commentators.

Despite Tikhanovsky’s release, several of the other most prominent political prisoners remain in detention, including Viktor Babariko, who was on track to defeat Lukashenko in the 2020 elections.

This is not the first time that Lukashenko has tried to expel political dissidents. Maria Kolesnikova also remains in jail serving a long sentence on charges of trying to organise a coup d'état, who was previously Babariko’s campaign manager, before she teamed up with Tikhanovskaya to run for president in the race.

While Tikhanovskaya fled into exile in Latvia with her children shortly after the elections were over, Kolesnikova remained in Minsk and continued to openly demonstrate against Lukashenko until she was snatched from the street by the local KGB and jailed.

The authorities tried to secretly expel her by driving her to the Ukrainian border, but she famously ripped up her passport in front of the officers, making it impossible to cross the border, and she was returned to a jail in Minsk and eventually tried and convicted. Since then she has rarely been seen in public and is reportedly suffering from failing health.

In comments to Belarusian state media on August 22, Lukashenko said: “Take them away. We release them, just for them to wage war against us again? Society won’t support me on that.”

“Forced deportation from the country is a continuation of political terror and unjust punishment of innocent people,” said exiled Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya (Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya from her base in Latvia, as cited by The Kyiv Independent. “The regime must stop the repression completely, not simply replace one (form of) pressure with another.”

Lukashenko was re-elected in a landslide for his seventh five-year term in January during largely peaceful polls after he ratcheted up his repression and drove most of the opposition into exile.

The new offer to Trump for more releases comes after more than a year of backchannel diplomacy and three mid-level US delegations to Minsk.

The Kyiv Independent reports that the broader deal under discussion could include lifting sanctions on Belarus’s national airline Belavia and on potash producer Belaruskali, a major source of foreign exchange earnings for the Belarusian government. Both were sanctioned following the forced landing of a commercial Ryanair flight in Minsk in 2021, when another political dissident, founder and editor in chief of the Nexta Telegram channel, Roman Protasevich, was arrested. AS bne IntelliNews reported, Nexta played a key role in coordinating the 2020 mass demonstrations.

Protasevich was tortured and remains in Minsk where the KGB has tried to co-op him into supporting the regime.

Lukashenko has never publicly acknowledged the existence of political prisoners, instead accusing opponents of economic crimes or abusing freedoms of speech and assembly. Notably, the term “political prisoners” was absent from the recent Trump-Lukashenko exchange, The Kyiv Independent reports.

The task of processing the potential releases lies with a pardon commission formed by Lukashenko in February 2023. In an effort to improve his image with his base of blue-collar workers and pensioners, who remain grateful to the strong man, as his neo-Soviet system shielded the majority of working-class Belarusian from the worst pain of the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, Lukashenko has been releasing knots of political prisoners in the last year.

The pardon commission includes senior law enforcement figures and state media personalities accused of participating in political repression.

Belarus’s Viasna Human Rights Centre estimates that more than 4,000 people have been recognised as political prisoners since May 2020, with over 1,100 still imprisoned.

Opposition activist Anatol Kotau disappears

The talk of more political prisoner releases comes amidst fresh reports of the disappearance of Belarusian opposition figure Anatol Kotau, who has gone missing after leaving European Union territory and entering Turkey, independent Belarusian media reported on August 26.

Kotau was last seen on August 21 after arriving in Istanbul, Turkey, for personal reasons. Kotau stopped responding to calls shortly after his arrival in Istanbul and failed to board his scheduled return flight to Warsaw on August 24, Nasha Niva reports. His family has since reported his disappearance to Turkish police and informed the Polish consulate in Istanbul.

Kotau is a former Belarusian diplomat and mid-level government official, but publicly resigned his post in protest of the disputed 2020 presidential election. He later joined the opposition team of Pavel Latushka, a former minister and one of the opposition leaders.

In 2021, he parted ways with the group amid allegations of embezzlement and subsequently became a public critic of Belarus’s exiled democratic forces, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.

Sentenced in absentia by a Belarusian court to 12 years in prison on conspiracy and coup d'état charges, he has been living in exile in Poland since.

Kotau is the second opposition figure to vanish after leaving EU territory this year, The Kyiv Independent reports. In March, Anzhalika Melnikava, speaker of the exiled Coordination Council, disappeared after allegedly withdrawing $150,000 from a pro-democracy fund in Poland. Investigative journalists later identified a Belarusian secret service agent who had reportedly accompanied her on several trips. Her whereabouts remain unknown.

The KGB regularly organises snatch operations of opposition figures in other countries. The most dramatic was in Protasevich’s case when the authorities sent a MiG fighter jet to force the landing of his Ryanair flight, on its way back to Riga where he was living in exile. Protasevich reported his suspicion that members of the KGB were in the airport in the crowd before his departure. He was in Athens for a conference and reportedly Tikhanovskaya was supposed to be on the same flight, but changed her plans at the last minute.