Belarus releases three detainees, including a US citizen and a journalist
Journalist with US-funded broadcaster is among those released, praised by the ambassador as a ’big day for Team America’.
Belarus has released three detainees including a veteran journalist for a US government-funded broadcaster and a US citizen, the White House said on Wednesday.
The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, confirmed the release on Wednesday of three people including “one American and two individuals from Belarus, one of whom worked for Radio Liberty”. The released American has not been identified.
The opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya posted on social media that the activist Alena Maushuk was among those released and had a serious health condition, adding that all three of those released were in Vilnius.
The freed detainees also included Andrey Kuznechyk, a journalist with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which is known in Belarus as Radio Svoboda.
In a statement, Stephen Capus, the president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), said: “This is a joyous day for Andrey, his wife, and their two young children. After more than three years apart, this family is together again thanks to President Trump.”
RFE/RL is a broadcaster funded by the US Congress, which was founded during the cold war to transmit information behind the iron curtain.
On Sunday, the billionaire Elon Musk, who is spearheading Trump’s federal government cost-cutting efforts, called for RFE/RL and another broadcaster funded by Congress, the Voice of America, to be shuttered.
According to RFE/RL Kuznechyk was initially sentenced to 10 days in jail on hooliganism charges before facing fresh charges of creating an extremist group and being sentenced to six years.
His case is seen as part of a larger campaign of repression against independent media and civil society groups in Belarus.
The US ambassador to Lithuania, Kara McDonald, speaking on CNN from Vilnius, described the release as “a big day for team America, for the president, for the secretary of state”, adding: “We just welcomed them [the detainees] here a few minutes ago.”
Chris Smith, the deputy assistant secretary of state for eastern European affairs, described a “special operation” in which he and other US officials “crossed into the Belarusian frontier [and] went into Minsk to meet with Belarusian counterparts who brought these three detainees to us”.
“They were handed over to us, and we brought them back out through Lithuania,” he told CNN.
The release of detainees from Belarus comes after the American schoolteacher Marc Fogel was released by Russia after three and a half years in prison.
Fogel, 63, was serving a 14-year sentence for drug smuggling after being caught at a Moscow airport with a small amount of marijuana. He was flown on Tuesday to Washington, where he celebrated his release with Trump at the White House on Tuesday.
In return for the release of Fogel, the US is to send convicted Russian criminal Alexander Vinnik back to Russia, according to US officials.
He was arrested in 2017 in Greece at the request of the US on cryptocurrency fraud charges and was later extradited to the US, where he pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy to commit money laundering.
He is in custody in California awaiting transport to Russia, the officials said. The Kremlin confirmed that a Russian citizen was freed in the US in exchange for Fogel but refused to identify him until he arrives in Russia.
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