Belarus frees 25 prisoners as Washington lifts sanctions on two firms

Aleksandr Lukashenko’s government released 25 prisoners on 16 September in return for the United States lifting sanctions on two Belarusian companies, US special envoy John Coale said after talks in Minsk. The firms are Lakokraska, the country’s main maker of paints and coatings, and Bellesbumprom, a forestry and paper group. Coale called the bargain an interim deal and a show of goodwill. He said more releases and more sanctions relief were still on the table.

Coale has been negotiating with Lukashenko since last year. Earlier rounds, by his count, produced about 500 releases against partial easing of US measures. In March he had spoken of a much larger single tranche. Wednesday’s 25 is smaller. EU sanctions are untouched. Lithuanian authorities helped receive people at the border. Coale posted photographs from the crossing and thanked Vilnius as well as Minsk.

Viasna, the Belarusian human rights centre, identified some of those freed. They included Andrei Alyaksandrau, a journalist who had been serving 14 years, his wife Iryna Zlobina, sentenced to nine years, and Liudmila Chekina, who headed the independent site TUT.by. Viasna still lists 887 political prisoners inside the system. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the opposition leader in exile, said she was glad for each person who walked out and that the work is unfinished until the list is empty.

The trade is easy to describe and hard to like from either pole. Washington gets living people out of colonies and pre-trial jails. Lukashenko gets two export businesses off an American list and a visiting US official who thanks him on camera. Critics call that a market in hostages. Supporters call it the only method that has moved the number down. Both descriptions can be true at once.

Lakokraska and Bellesbumprom are not banks or arms plants. They are industrial names that sell into neighbouring markets. Taking them off the US list is a measurable concession. It is not a general thaw. Belarus remains tied to Russia’s war economy. Lukashenko remains the man who crushed the 2020 protests. Coale’s brief is prisoners and selected sanctions, not a rewrite of that structure.

The next number to watch is not 25. It is whether the remaining 887 move in tens or in hundreds, and whether each new slice of relief is another pair of factories or something larger. Coale said the sides were not finished. Lukashenko wants the rest of the American list gone. Tsikhanouskaya wants the rest of the cells emptied. Those two demands do not meet in the middle without more of the same bargaining that produced Wednesday’s bus to Lithuania.