Latest news with #Lukashenka
Euronews
2 days ago
- Politics
- Euronews
Exclusive: Belarus releases political prisoners in surprise decision
Belarus has released a group of political prisoners on Saturday, in a US-brokered deal with President Aliaksandr Lukashenka, Belarusian opposition sources told Euronews. Exiled Belarus opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya's husband Siarhei Tsikhanouski is among the released. Lukashenka's regime arrested him in 2020 as the then-Belarusian opposition presidential candidate and Lukashenka's direct opponent. The surprise release was brokered by US envoy Keith Kellogg, a longtime advisor to US President Donald Trump, who travelled to Belarus earlier this week for talks with Lukashenka. Since last year, Lukashenka has been regularly pardoning small numbers of imprisoned government critics in what analysts saw as a signal that Minsk was seeking to ease tensions with the West. In the run-up to the January 2025 presidential elections, Lukashenka has pardoned prisoners convicted of extremism, claiming that it was a "humane gesture" toward those who had "gone astray". Kellogg, US special envoy for Russia's war against Ukraine, has said privately that the trip to Minsk could help kickstart peace talks aimed at ending Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to two of the sources. Earlier, exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya told Euronews that Lukashenka "cannot be trusted' and Belarus is not a place for negotiations because Lukashenka "is part of this war". Lukashenka is a key ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and has allowed him to stage part of his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 from Belarus. "He's a co-aggressor and he's serving Putin's interest, and he cannot be trusted at all," Tsikhanouskaya told Euronews. She described Russia's war in Ukraine as a blessing for Lukashenka and that he did not want it to stop. "(The government) is producing a huge amount of stuff for Russian army, and in this atmosphere of sanctions against Lukashenka's regime, it's a good source of income for him," she added. Who is Siarhei Tsikanouski? Previously a popular blogger, Siarhei Tsikhanouski decided to run against Lukashenka in the 2020 presidential elections and was arrested in spring, long before the summer protests in Belarus. Tsikhanouski was first given 'administrative detention' which prevented him from filing his candidacy before the deadline. His wife Tsikhanouskaya filed her candidacy instead, emerging as a leading opposition candidate. A Minsk court sentenced Tsikhanouski to 18 years in prison with the harshest possible conditions. He has not been allowed family visits and telephone calls. He has also not been allowed to meet with his lawyer confidentially, read, send letters, or receive letters and parcels. In 2023 he was given a new sentence of 1.5 years in prison in addition to the 18-year sentence he was already serving on the charge of 'disobedience to prison administration'. Tsikhanouskaya had no contact with her husband since he was jailed. She previously told Euronews that she did not know if he was alive. 'My children write letters to him, but they get no response. They ask if their father is okay, if he is still alive—it's an incredibly painful situation. My husband's imprisonment is my personal pain, but my goal is to free all political prisoners,' the Belarusian opposition leader said in an earlier interview with Euronews.** Lukashenka claimed victory in the 2020 presidential election deemed fraudulent by the EU and external observers, triggering mass protests. They were violently crushed by police, with tens of thousands of peaceful protesters arrested, and countless detainees suffering torture and other ill-treatment. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya went into exile for fear of prosecution. Many of her close associates, including her closest companion during the election campaign, Maryia Kalesnikava, were jailed. According to the Belarusian human rights centre Vyasna, over 50,000 people have been detained on political grounds after mass protests broke out following Lukashenka's 2020 presidential election win, and at least 5,472 people have been convicted in politically-motivated criminal cases. The United Nations estimates that around 300,000 Belarusians have left the country since then, with most going to Poland and Lithuania. Even today, between 15 and 20 people are being detained in Belarus every day. In 2023, Tsikhanouskaya was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Euronews
5 days ago
- Politics
- Euronews
Tsikhanouskaya: Lukashenka 'cannot be trusted' in US envoy visit
Exiled Belarus opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya told Euronews that President Aliaksandr Lukashenka "cannot be trusted at all", following a report of a planned meeting in Minsk between him and the Trump administration's Ukraine envoy. Keith Kellogg, a longtime advisor to US President Donald Trump, is planning to travel to Belarus this week to meet Lukashenka, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing four sources. Kellogg has said privately that the trip could help kickstart peace talks aimed at ending Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to two of the sources. Two rounds of direct talks between Moscow and Kyiv failed to make progress on ending the war, now in its fourth year. However, Tsikhanouskaya said on Wednesday that Belarus was not a place for negotiations because Lukashenka "is part of this war". Lukashenka is a key ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and allowed him to stage part of his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 from Belarus. "He's a co-aggressor and he's serving Putin's interest, and he cannot be trusted at all," Tsikhanouskaya told Euronews. Tsikhanouskaya described Russia's war in Ukraine as a blessing for Lukashenka and that he did not want it to stop. "(The government) is producing a huge amount of stuff for Russian army, and in this atmosphere of sanctions against Lukashenka's regime, it's a good source of income for him," she added. "So he's not interested in peace. He maybe wants to be important in this deal, but he's not an independent actor here." The West has imposed sanctions on Belarus over its support for Russia's war in Ukraine as well as presidential elections in August 2020 and January this year that were widely rejected by Western governments and derided as sham polls. Lukashenka is Europe's longest-serving ruler, having continuously governed the former Soviet republic for 31 years. Tsikhanouskaya ran against Lukashenka in the 2020 vote, and was forced to leave the nation shortly afterwards. Along with many international observers, she accused him of stealing victory from her by resorting to large-scale vote-rigging. Minsk and Moscow have both dismissed such accusations and Western criticism of the elections overall. In early 2020, during Trump's first term, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo became the highest-ranking official from Washington to visit Belarus in more than two decades. However, relations between Minsk and Washington soured after Joe Biden became US president in 2021, and the US suspended operations at its embassy in Minsk in February 2022 following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. This year, during Trump's second term, it appears that the US is attempting to improve ties with Belarus once more. In February, US officials visited Belarus to retrieve three political prisoners, according to a report in the New York Times. And in April, Belarus released Youras Ziankovich, a US citizen who had been jailed on allegations of plotting to assassinate the country's authoritarian leader. His supporters and Washington had called the charges bogus. Separately, the EU's foreign policy chief warned on Wednesday that Russia poses a direct threat to the European Union and said its massive defence spending shows that the Kremlin has a "long-term plan for long-term aggression". In an earlier interview with Euronews last week, Tsikhanouskaya said that the large-scale joint military exercises between Russia and Belarus taking place in the autumn might be a threat to NATO's eastern flank. "Don't forget the last military drills in Belarus ended with the attack on Ukraine", she told Euronews last week, referring to the upcoming Zapad 2025 manoeuvres.
New European
27-01-2025
- Politics
- New European
The election that wasn't in Belarus
The question at the heart of this election was never who would win, but by how much the incumbent president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenka, would steal the vote. The answer came on Sunday. He won 86.8% of the vote: a new record for the president's 30-year rule. Lukashenka barely campaigned at all, telling factory workers he was simply too busy. In reality, vote rigging made the result a foregone conclusion. Lukashenka's closest rival, Sergei Syrankov of the Communist party, took 3.2% of the vote. 'We understand who'll be the winner in this race,' Syrankov told Russian state media. 'We fully support that.' Activists were threatened by security services in the run up to the election. Those are not idle threats – 1,265 political prisoners already behind bars. No invitation was sent to Europe's main election observation body, the OSCE, and voters were banned from photographing their ballot papers – a tactic previously used by opposition activists to check whether votes were being fairly counted. 'These are not elections but a 'special operation' to illegally cling to power,' said Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the leader of the Belarusian opposition. She remains in exile after standing against Lukashenka in the country's 2020 elections. Her husband, Sergei, was jailed in Belarus for 18 years after organising anti-government protests. 'We will never accept [Lukashenka].' Lukashenka's stage-managed victory was intended to show a government firmly in control. During the last elections, five years ago, thousands of pro-democracy protesters flooded the streets in defiance of the regime. Although they were violently dispersed by police, the memory of that protest lingers. But while Minsk tries to project an image of stability, the reality of different. State oppression is only intensifying, says Olga Dryndova, a political scientist at the University of Bremen and editor of Belarus-Analysen . 'Belarus is still not North Korea, but there are signs of a state trying to control all the spheres of society, including the private sphere,' she says. 'Elections now play a different role: it's not about trying to show a façade of democracy, it's about showing control over society, control over the elections, and control over the political system.' As well as the pseudo-democratic sheen of the vote itself, Minsk released more than 250 political prisoners in the run-up to the election, a signal of willingness for fresh dialogue with the West. 'Lukashenka wants to try and win back some legitimacy: for [the West] to call him the president and talk directly to him. As a rule, a lot of countries don't do that now because they don't recognise him as president,' says Dr. Andrew Wilson, a historian at University College London. Such recognition is not only a matter of pride for Lukashenka himself: it would give Minsk a greater chance of shedding some of the sanctions currently imposed against it, for reasons ranging from Belarus' role in Russia's invasion of Ukraine to political persecutions. In a joint statement, the EU diplomat Kaja Kallas and EU enlargement commissioner Marta Kos described the vote as a 'sham election' that was 'neither free, nor fair.' The US State Department also denounced the vote. 'Repression is born of weakness, not strength. The unprecedented measures to stifle any opposition make it clear that the Lukashenka regime fears its own people,' it said. But Lukashenka's leadership is less tied now with the ballot box than it is with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Minsk has battled to ensure it does not become directly embroiled in the conflict, although it has allowed Russian troops to launch attacks from its territory. 'Lukashenka has managed to be a co-aggressor against Ukraine, but has avoided sending troops to fight there. Belarusians like that,' says Tatsiana Kulakevich, an associate professor at the University of South Florida. 'For the last 30 years, the ideology of the Belarusian state has been 'Belarusians are a peaceful people'. It's so ingrained, this idea that we don't want to be 'like Ukraine'.' An unfavourable turn to the war for Putin will mean more pressure for Minsk to commit its own armed forces to the cause – or even the potential loss of Minsk's most important ally. Such scenarios are likely to leave Minsk increasingly hopeful for peace talks – particularly if Belarus can escape international ire in any final deal. 'If they forget about Belarus during peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, then Belarus is screwed because nothing will change,' says Kulakevich. 'People in Ukraine are paying for freedom with their lives. In Belarus, they are dying too – except hidden in jail.'
