Those recently freed from jail say authoritarian leader is using political prisoners as bargaining chips to ease sanctions
As the bus crossed into Lithuania, Mikola Dziadok, newly freed after five punishing years behind bars in Belarus, shouted: “God bless America.”
It was an unlikely cry from a committed anarchist and journalist who had spent almost half of his adult life behind bars for defying Alexander Lukashenko’s regime.
“I was so happy. At that moment, I loved the entire American administration. Only at that moment, of course,” he said with a grin in a Vilnius cafe, his hair still cropped from prison.
Dziadok, 37, was among 52 political prisoners released and deported to exile in neighbouring Lithuania earlier this month – one of the largest such pardons in Belarus’s post-Soviet history, and the latest ploy by Lukashenko, the shrewd authoritarian who has ruled Belarus for decades and close ally of Vladimir Putin, in his effort to improve relations with the Trump administration.
