U.S.-Brokered Swap Frees Five Held in Belarus and Russia, Including Journalist Andrzej Poczobut

Overview

• President Trump said U.S. efforts led by special envoy John Coale secured the release of three Polish and two Moldovan prisoners from Belarusian and Russian custody, and he thanked Belarus leader Aleksandr Lukashenko for cooperating.
• Andrzej Poczobut, a reporter for Gazeta Wyborcza and a leading voice in Belarus’s Polish minority, was among those freed after serving an eight-year sentence widely denounced as political.
• Poland’s Foreign Ministry described a multi-country, reciprocal arrangement that moved three people from Belarus to Poland in exchange for three going the other way, with additional releases handled through separate agreements.
• Polish officials said the freed group also included Grzegorz Gawel, a Roman Catholic friar, and a Belarusian national who had worked with Polish intelligence, whose name they did not disclose.
• Earlier this year, Lukashenko approved the release of about 250 political prisoners under a deal with Washington that brought partial U.S. sanctions relief, signaling transactional cooperation even as Belarus stays aligned with Russia.