UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The Belarusian president, whose iron-fisted rule earned him the nickname of “Europe’s Last Dictator,” wants to fool President Donald Trump with gestures like prisoner releases, the exiled leader of Belarus’ opposition told The Associated Press on Wednesday on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.
Trump warmed U.S. relations with President Alexander Lukashenko this month by easing sanctions in exchange for the three-decade president’s release of some political prisoners. The deal allows Belarus to repair and buy parts for its Boeing aircraft and other planes.
Trump praised the two leaders’ personal relationship, reporting a “wonderful talk” with Lukashenko, thanking him and saying he looked forward to another meeting with the man whom much of the Western world largely shuns. Lukashenko still holds about 1,200 political prisoners, according to human rights advocates, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski and some top opposition activists.
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya fled Belarus under government pressure after running against Lukashenko in 2020. That election gave him his sixth term in office and triggered the largest wave of mass protests in Belarus’ history. His government responded to peaceful demonstrations with a brutal crackdown, arresting tens of thousands of people and driving even more out of the country.
While thanking Trump Wednesday for winning prisoner releases, she also warned the United States “not to pay too much” for the small number of people the Belarusian leader has so far been willing to free. More than 50 prisoners were freed in the most recent release and, overall, Lukashenko has released more than 300 people over the past year.
“I suppose that it’s the intention of Lukashenko to fool President Trump,” she said. “You know, he wants to buy a Lamborghini for 2,000 Euros, taking a lot and not giving anything."
Tsikhanouskaya encouraged the U.S. administration to keep working on freeing prisoners while there is still an opportunity, saying, “people are dying in prisons."
But the opposition leader noted that despite the releases, the crackdown in Belarus continues. As some prisoners are released, many more are being jailed in a clampdown that she compared to a “revolving door.”
“That’s why we need ... consistent and irreversible changes, not to let this regime to take more and more and more hostages to sell them for higher price,” she said.
Trump surprised some at the U.N. on Tuesday when he said he believed Ukraine could win back all territory lost to Russia in more that a decade at war, a dramatic shift from his repeated calls for Kyiv to make concessions to end the war sparked by President Vladimir Putin’s February 2022 invasion of its smaller neighbor.
Tsikhanouskaya said that “it looks like President Trump believed in Ukraine, believed that they can win this war and hopefully it will become actions, not words. And of course, we also see that President Trump might be disappointed by Putin.”
Trump's state department praised the release of political prisoners, to a point.
“We view Belarus’s recent release of these political prisoners as another constructive step toward improving our bilateral relationship. There is much more to be done, and we hope to see continued progress,” the department said in a statement. “We will continue to explore opportunities for pragmatic engagement with Belarus where it is in the United States’ interest to do so.”