Lukashenko Frees More Prisoners for Trump, but Putin’s Missiles Aren’t Going Anywhere

President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus has landed on a formula that keeps Washington coming back to Minsk: Free a batch of political prisoners, bank a fresh round of American sanctions relief, yet leave the Kremlin’s military hardware exactly where it is.The latest round played out on September 16, when 25 detainees crossed into Lithuania, freed by Mr. Lukashenko’s regime in exchange for America lifting sanctions on two state companies — the paint and varnish maker Lakokraska and the wood and paper concern Bellesbumprom.The release came a day after President Trump’s special envoy for Belarus, John Coale, sat down with Mr. Lukashenko at Minsk for talks that Belarusian state media said ran about three hours. Mr. Coale also pledged to press Citibank to hand back roughly $44 million that Mr. Lukashenko says belongs to the state potash giant Belaruskali. The funds were frozen in line with since-lifted American sanctions, but the Belarusian leader recently called the action “a disgrace for the United States” and told reporters they were payment from a company that had cooperated with Minsk. At the same time, Washington asked him to trust its intentions.Still, Washington was quick to tout the prisoner release as a victory.“We are working to secure the release of more people in the very near future. We are not finished!” Mr. Coale wrote on social media after the prisoners were driven to Vilnius.Those freed included human rights campaigners, activists, journalists and lawyers. Mr. Coale has said he expects to return to Minsk in about a month and hopes the next group will number in the hundreds.Is Mr. Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus since 1994 and ranks among Vladimir Putin’s most dependable partners, actually inching out of Moscow’s orbit? Or has he found a routine that costs him nothing with the Kremlin while it buys him goodwill in Washington?The steady flow of detainees out of Belarusian penal colonies, moving in tandem with sanctions relief flowing the other way, has stirred exactly that debate in Western capitals.“It’s [Lukashenko’s] familiar balancing act. Keep Russia close enough to protect his regime while dangling just enough business and diplomatic openings to get Washington talking,” a research fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Ivana Stradner, tells The New York Sun.Washington, however, may not see it quite that way, and Mr. Coale is pressing ahead regardless, treating each new round of releases as proof that the strategy is working, even as the Kremlin’s footprint in Belarus grows.Prisoners for PotashThe pattern of prisoners for sanctions-relief swaps began in earnest in June 2025, when Mr. Coale — then serving as deputy to the Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg — helped secure the release of 14 prisoners, including opposition figure Siarhei Tsikhanouski. In September of that year,52 more were freed as Washington lifted sanctions on the state airline, Belavia.Days later, two United States Air Force lieutenant colonels, the incoming and outgoing defense attachés at the American Embassy, appeared at the Zapad-2025 Russian-Belarusian war games near Borisov — the first time American officers had watched the joint drills since Moscow used Belarus as a launchpad for its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The Pentagon said it accepted the invitation “in light of recent productive bilateral engagements between our countries.”Mr. Trump made the Coale appointment official last November. By December, 123 more had walked out of Belarusian custody, including Nobel laureate Ales Bialiatski and opposition figures Maria Kalesnikava and Viktar Babaryka. Washington’s end of the bargain that round: sanctions relief on Belarusian potash, the fertilizer ingredient that keeps much of the country’s export economy afloat. Then came March 19, and with it the biggest single batch yet: 250 prisoners set free in one stroke.What does Washington actually get out of it? Sanctions relief has flowed steadily toward Minsk with each new round of freed prisoners. Yet, the question of what the concessions are buying America beyond goodwill photographs has drawn skepticism even from analysts who support the releases themselves.Ms. Stradner, for one, points to the potash episode as proof of how little has actually changed in Minsk’s posture.“Trump touts a ‘massive’ Belarus potash deal, only for Lukashenko to say Belarus has no spare potash to sell because it’s already under contract,” she tells the Sun. “That tells us all we need to know about Lukashenko’s decoupling with Putin.”A former United States ambassador to Poland who now serves as a fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center raises a similar doubt about the touted potash arrangement.“Belarus would have difficulty exporting it through Poland or Lithuania, or even through Russia, and within minutes of Trump’s announcement of such a deal, Lukashenka said that most of his country’s potash was being sent elsewhere,” the fellow, Daniel Fried, tells the Sun, referring to Belarus’s pivot toward Chinese buyers. He used an alternate spelling for Mr. Lukashenko’s name.Lithuania’s Baltic Sea port of Klaipėda used to be the easy route: Belaruskali’s potash went out through the port for years until the European Union and America sanctioned the company in 2021 and shut the door. Mr. Lukashenko found another way: Most of his potash now moves through the Russian ports of Murmansk and St. Petersburg on its way to buyers in China and across Asia.Mr. Lukashenko said in May that Belarus has “completely rerouted” its fertilizer exports and no longer needs Lithuania, telling reporters at a regional summit that “the markets have been reconfigured” and that his potash now simply “loads in Russia.”A shift toward China, in other words, is not a shift away from Moscow — it runs through Moscow’s own ports.Meanwhile, the arrests have not stopped. The banned Belarusian rights group Viasna counted 889 political prisoners at the end of August, including 185 it considers especially vulnerable because of illness, age or conditions of detention. Mr. Lukashenko, for his part, denied during the September 15 talks with Mr. Coale that the prosecution of his opponents is politically driven.A Missile Brigade on the DoorstepWhile diplomats haggle over prisoners and bank accounts, the Russian military presence in Belarus has only grown heavier.Russia’s Defense Ministry released footage of its Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile system at an undisclosed location in Belarus on December 30, and Moscow later declared the system to be on combat duty. The nuclear-capable missile, first fired at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro in November 2024, is estimated by the Center for Strategic and International Studies to have a range of roughly 2,175 to 3,400 miles, putting much of Europe within its reach.On September 7, Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, Oleh Ivashchenko, said units of Russia’s 101st Missile Brigade, armed with the Oreshnik, are stationed in Belarus. His directorate also pointed to radio signal repeaters it said are being used to steer Russian Shahed drones toward Ukrainian targets.However, Ukrainian intelligence isn’t seeing signs of an actual invasion force building up. Kyiv rates the odds of a Belarusian offensive as low. Moscow and Minsk announced the placement of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus in 2023 but whether they ever showed up is a separate, murkier question. As of July, the Vilnius-based monitoring group iSANS still hadn’t found reliable confirmation that they have ever been deployed.Still, for Ms. Stradner, the military presence settles the question of loyalty.“Putin knows Lukashenko’s game. Open a Western door without leaving the Russian house,” she explains. “Belarus has given Russia access to its territory, airspace, military infrastructure and transport routes. For Putin, that strategic value matters far more than Lukashenko shaking hands with Washington.”That control looks, if anything, tighter than it has ever been.“At present, Moscow has more influence over Belarus than ever before,” a distinguished university professor of Russian and East European history at the University of Alberta, David Marples, tells the Sun. “I don’t think Putin is worried about them, because he can still control Lukashenko’s actions, and build up military resources on Belarusian territory.”Mr. Marples also highlights that the September release of just 25 prisoners, far fewer than the roughly 200 some had anticipated, was itself likely the result of pressure from Moscow.Analysts doubt the deal enhances Washington’s standing with the Lukashenko regime.“It does not change the overall balance of power over Belarus, which is dependent on China for investments, and on Russia for its economy and security,” the deputy head of the French-Russian analytical center Observo, Igor Delanoe, tells the Sun.Kyiv Calls Minsk’s BluffThe clearest test of how far Mr. Lukashenko will bend came not from Washington, but from Kyiv.Ukraine says Russia has been running radio relay equipment out of Belarusian border towns to help guide Shahed attack drones toward Ukrainian cities. On June 19, President Volodymyr Zelensky gave the Belarusian leader a deadline. “I am giving a week for it to be withdrawn; otherwise, we will do it ourselves,” Mr. Zelensky warned, making clear Ukraine would take out the equipment itself if Mr. Lukashenko didn’t.The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, called the demand aggressive. Three days later, the relays went dark, and Mr. Zelensky said Ukraine’s civilian death toll from the drone strikes was the reason he’d set the deadline in the first place. Minsk never publicly admitted it had backed down — though, tellingly, Mr. Lukashenko had already apologized to Mr. Zelensky for past insults just days before the ultimatum, a sign the two men were quietly patching things up even as the deadline played out in public.By September, the equipment was working again. Ukrainian intelligence flagged the same relay stations back in operation — proof, in effect, that Kyiv’s June ultimatum bought only as much quiet as Mr. Zelensky was willing to keep demanding. Once his attention shifted, Moscow flipped the switch. Belarusian territory remains available to Russia on Russia’s schedule, not Ukraine’s.Washington, notably, may have had a chance to pull Minsk further from Moscow’s grip years before any of this — and let it slip.A source close to the White House tells the Sun that in early 2022, the Lukashenko government quietly sought lobbyists to open a dialogue channel with Washington, an overture the Biden administration rebuffed. Days later, Russia invaded Ukraine, and Minsk was drawn back firmly to Mr. Putin’s side.Whatever standing with Washington that Mr. Lukashenko is rebuilding now is a shadow of what he once had.“Minsk will hardly be able to regain the diplomatic space it enjoyed during 2014 to 2022, when it hosted peace talks between Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany in the framework of the Minsk agreements,” Mr. Delanoe says.

Lukashenko Frees More Prisoners for Trump, but Putin’s Missiles Aren’t Going Anywhere

Lukashenko Frees More Prisoners for Trump, but Putin’s Missiles Aren’t Going Anywhere

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