A U.S. official pushed back on claims that prisoner releases have been paused, raising fresh doubts among activists and relatives.<\/p>\n
Donald Trump\u2019s special envoy to Belarus, John Cole, rejected reports of an alleged slowdown in the process of releasing Belarusian political prisoners. In response to a reporter\u2019s question on the X platform about suspending the releases, he answered with a single word: \u201cNo\u201d. Cole also did not answer when he would visit Minsk again.<\/p>\n
The day before, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the leader of the Belarusian democratic forces, stated that the administration of the US president informed Belarusian opposition figures in exile about a delay in their efforts to release new political prisoners in Belarus.<\/p>\n
Reactions from the parties and prospects for the release efforts<\/p>\n
\u201cFurther releases have been postponed for a certain period of time\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya<\/p>\n
According to Tsikhanouskaya, the American side told her that \u201cFurther releases have been postponed for a certain period of time,\u201d but she cannot disclose the reasons for this. <\/p>\n
\u201cKnowing the reason, I am not worried. Of course, we want as many people as possible to be released as quickly as possible, and any delay worsens the condition of many of them. But this is not the end of the process\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya<\/p>\n
This was the first public confirmation that the pace of negotiations led by Cole had slowed. As a result of these contacts, Lukashenko has already released about 500 political prisoners.<\/p>\n
John Cole on April 28 said that he expected to achieve the next release of prisoners in Belarus during May. He said that if this happens, a further loosening of sanctions against Minsk might be possible. A large Protestant festival took place in the Belarusian capital, where Protestant preacher Franklin Graham, a friend of Cole, was a guest. However, contrary to expectations, no new mass release of political prisoners in Belarus occurred.<\/p>\n
The human rights center \u201cViasna\u201d reports that about 870 political prisoners remain behind bars in Belarus, including at least 170 individuals who are considered particularly vulnerable due to age, health, or harsh detention conditions.<\/p>\n
In a broader context, these events highlight the complex and unpredictable nature of efforts to release political prisoners in Belarus and the ongoing role of international pressure, particularly from the United States, in these processes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are signs of criminal offenses, provided for by Article 345 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine \u2018Threat or violence against a law enforcement officer\u2019 and Article 194 \u2018Deliberate destruction or damage of property\u2019. The respective notices have been sent to the National Police\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 National Police<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A U.S. official pushed back on claims that prisoner releases have been paused, raising fresh doubts among activists…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1029,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[387,388,95,440,400,441],"class_list":["post-1028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-belarus-political-prisoners","tag-john-cole","tag-news","tag-prisoner-releases-delay","tag-svetlana-tikhanovskaya","tag-us-belarus-diplomacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}