Former Belarus prisoner urges caution on sanctions relief for Lukashenko

Katsiaryna Andreyeva, freed in March after more than five years behind bars, warned in Geneva that Western governments should not ease sanctions on Alexander Lukashenko’s government unless Belarus shows lasting, measurable human-rights change. More than 950 political prisoners remained in Belarusian jails, and Lukashenko, re-elected to a seventh term after the disputed 26 January 2025 vote, continued to pair a hard line at home with efforts to improve ties abroad.

Andreyeva was among 250 political prisoners released in March 2026 in a deal tied to U.S. sanctions relief. The U.S. eased pressure on Belarus’s financial sector and removed remaining sanctions on potash exports. The sanctions relief applied to two Belarusian banks, the Finance Ministry, the Belarusian Potash Company and Belaruskali. Human-rights groups warned the prisoner releases should not be mistaken for justice, and Amnesty International said freeing 250 people jailed on politically motivated grounds did not amount to an end to repression.

Andreyeva was sentenced to eight years in prison after covering the mass protests in Minsk in 2020, then spent more than five years in detention, including more than a week in solitary confinement. Her husband, journalist Ihar Ilyash, remains in detention. Andreyeva has called for an end to new arrests and for changes to penal code provisions that allow journalists to be charged with treason or with organizing protests.

In its December 2025 census, the Committee to Protect Journalists placed Belarus as the world’s fifth-worst jailer of journalists, with at least 25 behind bars, and later counted at least 26 journalists imprisoned in 2026, including at least six on treason charges. Nils Muižnieks, the U.N. special rapporteur, said Belarus continued to violate its international-human-rights obligations through politically motivated repression and that his office still received reports of new arrests, prolonged solitary confinement, incommunicado detention and denial of adequate medical care. CPJ counted four journalists sentenced in March 2026 to prison terms ranging from three to 14 years because of their work.

U.N. experts have also said some post-release expulsions of prisoners abroad violated human rights.