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Belarus, the closest ally of Russia, has released an American prisoner and two from the prison, an opposition group exiled on Wednesday said in the last sign that the scratch president Belaruso, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, was looking for ways of Improve frozen relationships with the west.
The launches, announced by an opposition group led by Svetlana Tikhanovskaya in Lithuania, a neighbor of Belarus, followed what the Western diplomats said it was a secret visit on Wednesday to Minsk, the Belarusian capital, by an deputy deputy secretary of the state of the state of the USA, Christopher W. Smith. The group did not identify the American who was released.
The State Department did not respond to the messages in search of comments on whether Mr. Smith had traveled to Minsk, in what would be the highest level visit to Belarus by a US official since Mike Pompeo, a secretary of State during the first administration of President Trump, it was. There in 2020 seeking to “normalize” ties.
Mr. Smith, a remnant of the Biden Administration, last month helped ensure the liberation of another American citizen held in Belarus, Anastassia Nuhfer.
Franak Viacorka, Chief of Cabinet of Mrs. Tikhanovskaya, said in A video posted on Telegram who had visited the United States embassy in Vilnius, Lithuania, and picked up one of the people who, according to him, had been released, Alena Movshuk, whom he described as an activist.
He did not appoint the American Freed, but said that the third person released was Andrey Kuznechyk, a journalist of the Radio Free Europe’s Belarus service, a news organization financed by the United States.
Lithuanian government officials said that an American citizen had entered Wednesday in that Baltic Nation of Belarus. They didn’t give a name either. They said Mr. Smith was now in Vilna and would hold meetings there on Thursday with European diplomats.
Since the trip of Mr. Pompeo to Minsk in February 2020, the relations between Belarus and the West have gone worse, poisoned by the brutal offensive of Mr. Lukashenko in the protests of the street nationwide after what their Opponents and Western governments were a presidential election managed in August in August of August. 2020.
The large -scale invasion of Russia of Ukraine in February 2022, which was launched in part from the Belarusian territory, became more dishonored. The United States closed its embassy in Minsk shortly after the beginning of the invasion.
In recent months, however, a slow but constant current of prisoners, mostly people imprisoned for their participation in the protests of 2020, have been released in what analysts and opposition activists see as an effort of Mr. Lukashenko to get your country from cold.
Mr. Lukashenko, distrustful of being too dependent on Russia for economic and security support, has a long history of maneuver between this and west, a game that ended abruptly after the repression after the elections in 2020, but now It seems anxious to revive.
An early opponent in the 2020 race was Sergei Tikhanovsky, but was arrested shortly after announcing his candidacy and then sentenced to 18 years in prison, where he remains. Mrs. Tikhanovskaya, her wife, became a candidate in her place, but fled the country shortly after the elections and was sentenced in absence to 15 years.
With all their prominent critics taken to the exiled or imprison Votation – even more than 81 percent claimed in the disputed 2020 elections.
