Belarus opposition leader warns Trump to beware of Lukashenko, urges continued prisoner releases

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the Belarusian opposition leader, told the Associated Press at the United Nations General Assembly that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is trying to fool Donald Trump with gestures like prisoner releases. The sanctions-relief deal that accompanied a partial prisoner release allows Belarus to repair and buy spare parts for its Boeing aircraft and other planes, and Trump has praised his personal relationship with Lukashenko, saying he had a wonderful talk with the Belarusian leader and that he looked forward to another meeting. Lukashenko still holds a large number of political prisoners, according to human rights groups.

Tsikhanouskaya noted that about 1,200 people remain jailed for political reasons, including Nobel laureate Ales Bialiatski and several top opposition activists. She described the 2020 presidential vote as the trigger for Belarus’s largest wave of mass protests and said authorities answered peaceful demonstrations with a brutal crackdown that drove tens of thousands to flee the country. She thanked Trump for the prisoner releases but warned against overvaluing the gesture.

Tsikhanouskaya emphasized that, despite some releases, the crackdown in Belarus continues. As prisoners are freed, many others are jailed, creating a revolving door she compared to a cycle of arrests used to extract concessions. “That’s why we need consistent and irreversible changes, not to let this regime take more and more and more hostages to sell them for higher price,” she said, adding that people are dying in prisons.

Trump surprised some at the U.N. on Tuesday when he said he believed Ukraine could win back all territory lost to Russia in more than a decade of war, a dramatic shift from his previous calls for Kyiv to concede to end the conflict sparked by Vladimir Putin’s February 2022 invasion. Tsikhanouskaya said that it looked like the president believed in Ukraine and that the United States should follow through with actions, not just words, and that Trump “might be disappointed by Putin.”

The U.S. State Department praised Belarus’s release of political prisoners, while underscoring that much more remains to be done. “We view Belarus’s recent release of these political prisoners as another constructive step toward improving our bilateral relationship. There is much more to be done, and we hope to see continued progress,” a department spokesperson said, adding that Washington will continue to explore opportunities for pragmatic engagement where it serves U.S. interests.

Beyond the prisoner releases, Tsikhanouskaya and Belarus’s exile community continue to press for broader reforms, including the release of additional detainees and the implementation of credible, rights-respecting elections and an independent judiciary. Human rights advocates have long warned that Lukashenko’s regime relies on arrests and coercion to maintain control, making irreversible change a central demand of opposition leaders and international partners. The UN General Assembly gathering underscored the broader international debate over how to balance engagement with pressure in Minsk as the Belarusian leader seeks to normalize relations with Western governments while maintaining tight political control at home.