Belarus releases 123 prisoners including opposition leaders after US lifts sanctions

Nobel prize winner Ales Bialiatski and opposition figure Maria Kalesnikava among those freed after US talks with Alexander Lukashenko

The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, has freed 123 prisoners, including Nobel peace prize winner Ales Bialiatski and leading opposition figure Maria Kalesnikava, after the US lifted sanctions on Belarusian potash, a key export.

The announcement came after two days of talks with an envoy of the US president, Donald Trump, the latest diplomatic push since the Trump administration started talks with the autocratic leader.

The prisoner release on Saturday, the largest since talks began, is part of a larger rapprochement the Lukashenko regime has been attempting with the west. A close ally of Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, Minsk is largely isolated from European and other western states due to its poor human rights record and brutal crackdown on popular protests.

The gradual detente is part of what US officials told Reuters was an attempt to pull him from Putin’s sphere of influence, an initiative about which Belarusian opposition has expressed doubts.