From North Korea’s Kim Jong-un to Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, President Trump has shown a willingness to negotiate with even the world’s most oppressive leaders — and it’s no different for Alexander Lukashenko, the iron-fisted 71-year-old authoritarian who has ruled Belarus since 1994.
After Mr. Trump eased sanctions on Belarus earlier this month, leaders of the country’s pro-democracy movement raised concerns that the American president was rewarding a dictator who has rigged elections, suppressed dissent and imprisoned political opponents.
“It’s the intention of Lukashenko to fool President Trump,” Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the exiled leader of Belarus’ opposition, told the Associated Press on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week.
But where some see appeasement, others suggest the U.S. administration’s pursuit of rapprochement with the former Soviet republic is a bid to chip away at Moscow’s influence in the Eastern European country of 9.1 million.
The sanctions relief Mr. Trump offered Mr. Lukashenko allowed Belarus to buy needed replacement parts for its aging commercial airliners. The White House is also planning to reopen the U.S. embassy in Minsk, closed since 2022, and has opened the door to more trade negotiations.
In return, Mr. Lukashenko on Sept. 11 released 52 political prisoners, including Ms. Tsikhanouskaya’s husband.
The Belarusian military also scaled back the size of annual joint wargames with Russia and, in an unexpected move, invited the Western press to observe the drills. With NATO members Poland, Lithuania and Latvia on its northern border, military exercises like “Zapad 2025” (“West 2025”) have traditionally drawn intense scrutiny from the U.S. and allies. In a nod to those concerns, the location of the wargames was relocated further away from the northern borders.
“We will show whatever is of interest to you. Whatever you want. You can go there and see, talk to people,” said Belarusian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin in a media statement.
Observers from the Pentagon and from NATO member countries, Turkey and Hungary, attended the four days of drills that wrapped up on Sept. 16.
Many of the 52 political prisoners released four days earlier, on the eve of the wargames, were immediately deported to Lithuania, where they were met at the border by Belarusian opposition leader Dziani Kuchynski.
The exiled pro-democracy activist told The Washington Times later that he waited for hours with a small knot of journalists, bracing for the much-awaited moment.
“I traveled 72 hours from the White House to the Lithuanian-Belarusian border for that moment. It was worth the hard work to see these heroes walk free,” he said.
Mr. Kuchynski, an advisor to Ms. Tsikhanouskaya, has been active in Washington in recent months. He and other Belarus opposition leaders have held meetings with Rep. Joe Wilson, South Carolin Republican, Sen. Bill Keating, Massachusetts Democrat and Sen. Chris Smith, New Jersey Republican, all of whom co-chair the Friends of Belarus Caucus.
There are an estimated 1,200 more political prisoners still imprisoned in Belarus, and Mr. Kuchynski said he and his exiled countrymen are working with the administration and congressional leaders to secure their freedom.
“I think President Trump is trying to help release our political prisoners,” said Mr. Kuchynski, “It’s the main purpose of his call to Lukashenka and the visit of his team to Belarus.”
Several U.S. officials, including the Trump administration’s envoy to Ukraine, have made visits to Belarus this year. One such visit in February resulted in the freeing of other political prisoners and an American citizen.
Belarus’s flirtation with the West has precedent in the first Trump administration. Then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to the authoritarian nation in 2020.
“During that period, Lukashenko wanted to distance himself from Moscow over the 2014 invasion of Ukraine,” said Pavel Slunkin, a former foreign ministry official in Belarus. “There were some discussions with Secretary Pompeo about weaning Belarus off Russian oil and instead importing American oil via seaports in Lithuania or Ukraine.”
The disputed August 2020 election upended those overtures.
Ms.Tsikhanouskaya, who ran against Mr. Lukashenko in the 2020 election, claimed to have won the first round with at least 60% of the vote. The disputed election sparked a global outcry, but instead of stepping aside, Mr. Lukashenko instituted a brutal crackdown on mass protests.
Mr. Slunkin said that Mr. Lukashenko has supported Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine out of a sense of quid pro quo following Russia’s support for him after the 2020 election protests.
Belarus, which shares a long southern border with Ukraine, has been an essential logistics and staging area for Russia’s invasion.
“Belarus is a potential back channel to Putin’s direct thinking,” Mr. Slunkin said. “He meets Putin as much as six times a year and has known Russia’s president for decades.”
Washington’s approach so far has produced only incremental results.
When NATO warplanes shot down Russian drones the night of Sept. 9, Belarus suggested the drones had wandered into Poland due to Ukrainian jamming. Belarus even claimed to have shot down some errant drones as well.
While the United States seems open to a new approach to Belarus, relations between Belarus and the European Union remain fraught, as Mr. Lukashenko attempts to navigate a path between cutting deals with Mr. Trump while continuing to back Mr. Putin.
Tensions have remained high since Sept. 9 on the border with Poland, and a recent Czech-led operation dismantled a Belarusian spy network operating across Europe.
And while President Trump talked this week about Ukraine retaking all of its territory lost to the Russians, Mr. Lukashenko and Mr. Putin were announcing joint plans to build a nuclear power plant in eastern Belarus that could supply power to Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine.