Government House, Minsk, Belarus. Tetiana Ivanova/AdobeStock.com

The unexpected release last month of prominent Belarusian activist Sergei Tikhanovsky has revived calls for Western leaders to increase pressure on Belarus to release more political prisoners. 

Tikhanovsky, the husband of opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, was released after US special envoy Keith Kellogg paid an official visit to the country on 21 June. Tikhanovsky was arrested in 2020 for violating public order after declaring his intention to run for president. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison. 

However, Slunkin is sceptical their release will lead to any significant change in US economic sanctions policy against Belarus. ‘These negotiations, they didn't start under Trump, they started under Biden, and even before Tikhanovsky there were over 200 political prisoners that were already released with no real change in American sanctions policy,’ he says. ‘There is nothing that we can see publicly that has changed America's approach to pressuring and sanctioning Lukashenko’s regime while the prisoners have been released. This indicates to me that there are ongoing negotiations.’

Mikhail Savva, a former Russian political prisoner living in exile, says the US and others must seize this opportunity to re-engage with Belarus. ‘Kellogg's visit to Belarus does not legitimise the Belarusian dictator,’ he says. ‘Such visits to free prisoners are necessary. People are of paramount importance and communication is permissible even with criminals to save people.’

He says it is critical now that Western leaders ‘increase pressure’ on Lukashenko to secure the release of other Belarusian political prisoners, such as human rights activist Ales Bialiatski, who was arrested in July 2021 along with Valiantsin Stefanovich, his deputy at Belarus’ leading human rights organisation, Viasna, and their lawyer, Uladzimir Labkovich. The three were prosecuted amid their efforts to document widespread abuses by the Belarusian authorities following the widely disputed 2020 presidential election.

Savva, who is also a member of the Expert Council of the Center for Civil Liberties in Kyiv, says this latest release could also be significant for the wider context of the Ukraine-Russia war. ‘This is Putin's inability to defeat Ukraine against the backdrop of decisive actions by Israel and the United States against Iran,’ he says. ‘The "axis of evil", to which Belarus also belongs, has become weaker, and Lukashenko has begun to manoeuvre between Russia and the West.’ 

There have been a number of recent high-profile prisoner exchanges between Russia and the US. In December 2022, Russia released US basketball player Brittney Griner, who had spent 10 months in a Russian prison on alleged drugs charges, in exchange for Viktor Bout, a notorious Russian arms dealer who was serving 25 years in a US prison.

In August 2024, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, US ex-marine Paul Whelan and political opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza were released by Russia as part of the largest prisoner swap since the Cold War. 

Mark Stephens CBE, Co-Chair of the IBA’s Human Rights Institute, says increasingly prisoner exchanges have become a diplomatic and negotiating tool between nations. ‘There's no doubt that in the last 20 years or so prisoner swaps have become a strategic tool where governments are using detainees as leverage for either political concessions or for their own nationals held elsewhere,’ he says. 

Belarus, which has long-standing alliances with the Kremlin and borders both Russia and Ukraine, has been used by both sides as a location for exchanging prisoners during the war. 

In early June, following talks in Turkey, both Russia and Ukraine pledged to swap at least 1,000 soldiers. It is understood that the bodies of at least 1,200 Ukrainian soldiers were returned to Russia, while Ukraine returned 27 bodies of Russian servicemen. 

The two sides also agreed to exchange heavily wounded prisoners of war and those aged under 25. Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War confirmed later in June that a number of Ukrainian soldiers had been returned. Many of these had been held captive since they were captured in Mariupol in 2022.  

Russian officials said that a number of its soldiers had been transferred to Belarus and were receiving ‘psychological and medical care’. Neither side have confirmed exactly how many soldiers were involved in this latest exchange.

Stephens says geopolitics is one of the biggest drivers behind prisoner and hostage exchanges given so little of the negotiations are governed by international law. ‘Seriously injured people fall under the Geneva Convention, which require prisoners who can no longer be militarily relevant to be sent back home, but the rest of it is in place of goodwill,’ he says. ‘The realpolitik of these things is that Belarus has made itself indispensable and so nobody's going to pick a fight with them at the moment.’

As the prospect of a near-term ceasefire looks increasingly doubtful, Savva believes Russia will continue to use hostage diplomacy to try and gain leverage in any peace talks. ‘Russia is actually using both Ukrainian non-combatants, who have been unlawfully imprisoned, and Russian political prisoners as hostages,’ he says. ‘The Kremlin is trying to put pressure on Ukraine and the collective West to achieve peace on its terms.’