The old American diplomatic slipped in silence in Belarus, a police state managed by a strong man insulted for decades in the West, traveling by car beyond the border for meetings with President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko and the head of his apparatus KGB security.
It was the first meeting of Lukashenko with a high official of the State Department in five years and the beginning of what could be a highly consequential defrosting of frozen relations between the United States and the closest ally of Russia.
The American visit under the Radar in Minsk, the capital Belarusian, came on Wednesday just one day after President Trump made a long phone call with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Both events reported Washington’s departure from a year of a year of attempt to isolate leaders please in the West because of their repressive and war in Ukraine policies.
After the interviews with Mr. Lukashenko, Christopher W. Smith, deputy secretary of state, and two other American officials headed towards a village near the border with Lithuania. There, courtesy of the Kgb Bielorusso, three people who had been imprisoned – an American political prisoner and two Belarusian – were waiting to be taken.
While the darkness fell, the Americans and the liberated prisoners crossed the border with Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital. Speaking outside the American embassy there on Wednesday evening, Mr. Smith greeted success with what he called “a special operation”, describing the release of prisoners as “a great victory and a response to the peace of the president Trump through the strength agenda “.
The next step, Mr. Smith told a gathering of western diplomats on Thursday in Vilnius, according to the people who participated, is a possible great deal on which Mr. Lukashenko would have released a series of political prisoners, including prominent ones . In return, the United States would relax the sanctions on the Belarusian banks and the exports of potassa, a key ingredient in the fertilizer, of which Belarus is a great producer.
The people who transmitted Mr. Smith’s story about his talks to Minsk spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a confidential meeting. Smith himself did not publicly reveal those who met or what was discussed and the State Department did not answer questions about these details.
Belarusia, which usually gars on any sign that is running out of its isolation, was also mostly silent, although an anchor on state television, Igor Tur, introduced a note of mystery, suggesting that Mr. Smith was not the true leader of the American delegation and that a higher officer took part.
Landwt from ViaCorka, the head of the staff of the leader of the exiled opposition Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who for a long time requested a rejection of penalties, said: “We are very grateful to the president Trump who managed to make things advance”. But, he added, the penalties should be loose only when “Lukashenko stops of repression and new arrests” and “releases all political prisoners, including the best characters”.
Viasna, a group of human rights that maintains a counting of political prisoners in Belarus, has put their number this week at 1,226. In recent months Lukashenko has freed more than 200, including two Americans freed since Trump came in office, but opposition activists say that even more people were arrested in the same period.
Tatyana Khomich, a sister of one of the most important political prisoners of Belarus, Maria Kolesnikova, welcomed the American awareness to Mr. Lukashenko. “The past pressure strategy has failed to release political prisoners, stop repression or change the behavior of the regime,” he said.
Mr. Smith also led the policy of Belarus during the Biden administration and started temporary discussions last year with the US allies on the installation of the penalties, but until this week he had never traveled to Minsk to meet Mr. Lukashenko.
That “the direct diplomatic approach could produce concrete results, including the release of individual prisoners or even a wider amnesty,” said Mrs. Khomich, while he attaches the dependence of Belarusia on Russia and “preserving a little leverage for The United States and the EU “
A guide guided by the Americans to the block and bankruptcy, Mr. Lukashenko under the Biden administration has produced a series of western sanctions. The sanctions on the potassa have cut an important line of economic life for the sovereign Belarusian, but they delivered a godsend in Russia, another large producer, while global prices have increased. Some Belarusian potassias have continued to reach global markets through Russia, rather than for the previous cheaper path through Lithuania.
Arthyom Shraibman, a political analyst who fled Belarus after a brutal repression of protests in 2020, said that western sanctions had a limited impact due to the vast support of Russia in Lukashenko. But a release of prisoners in exchange for relaxing sanctions, he said, “would mean that they have finally been used with some effects”.
“This would certainly be a positive development for the prisoners themselves, their families – and potentially to resolve wider issues of the relationship” between Belarus and the West, said ShraiBman, a scholar not residing at the Eurasia of Russia Carnegie.
How to deal with Mr. Lukashenko irritated western politicians for decades. A teacher to maneuver between the east and west and silenced his critics in the house, took power in 1994 and won seven increasingly dubious elections below, more recently in January, when he claimed 87 % of the votes, his bigger landslide still.
In 2005, at the time the secretary of state of the United States, Condoleezza Rice, denounced Belarus as “the last real dictatorship remaining in the heart of Europe”, although this was before Mr. Putin consolidated his autocratic control of Russia .
Spreated by the longevity of Mr. Lukashenko, now 70, his exile opponents, such as that of Mr. Putin, have often sought comfort in the voices according to which he was seriously ill. But Mr. Smith, informing Western diplomats in Vilnius, reported that Mr. Lukashenko did not show any sign of bad health and seemed confident and in full control, many of those who participated said.
Starting from a decade ago, the efforts to isolate Mr. Lukashenko gave way to a time of involvement, among the signs that Belarus wanted to avoid becoming too dependent on Moscow, the increasingly overbearing neighbor of the country.
While he was strongly entrusting Russia for low -cost oil deliveries, he needed to keep his vacillating economy afloat, Mr. Lukashenko resisted the pressure of Mr. Putin to fully implement an agreement from the 90s to form a “trade union state” which he feared would have reduced Belarus to a province of Russia.
Mr. Lukashenko appealed to Putin, who rushed into security consultants to help restore control. The vicious repression followed, with mass arrests and torture of prisoners.
Less than a year and a half later, Lukashenko has allowed Russia to use his country as a stop land for its invasion on the vast scale of Ukraine, with an abortion thrust to the south from Belarus to Kiev.
Smith, according to diplomats who participated in his briefing, said that the main objective of the United States was to guarantee freedom for multiple political prisoners. He said he asked Mr. Lukashenko if he was ready to downsize the repression of repression and was assured that he was. Another important goal, Smith said to diplomats, is to give Mr. Lukashenko to a little space to breathe outside the orbit raw influence of Russia.
Piotr Krawczyk, a former head of the Polish foreign intelligence service who worked with the first Trump administration to loosen Russia’s grip on Belarus, said that Belarus was “part of a wider American approach towards Russia”.
The United States are “facing Russia in Ukraine, Africa, in the oil and gas sector and in many other strategic areas,” he said. “Negotiating with Belarus creates further lever for the United States to report to Russia which should be more attentive to American topics”.
Shraibman, the analyst in exile, said that a great question now was like the Kremlin would react to any rapprochement between Belarus and the West. Many Russian officials “will probably panic at the perspective,” he said, but “there is no quick or simple way for Belarus to distance Russia, given Moscow’s economic domain on the country”.
He added that it was unlikely that President Trump “has any particular interest in understanding or a plan for Belarus”. Even so, he said, the “Trump factor certainly creates a little momentum, since everyone, including Lukashenko, try to impress the President of the United States and compete for his attention”.