'I'd talk to the Devil himself' — Belarus' opposition torn on whether to reengage with dictator Lukashenko to save political prisoners
Belarusian dictator Aleksander Lukashenko takes to the stage to deliver a national statement during the high level segment on day two of the UNFCCC COP29 Climate Conference at Baku Stadium on November 12, 2024 in Baku, Azerbaijan. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Eastern Europe
Last week, the Belarusian democratic opposition was torn apart by a particular question — should the West isolate and pressure Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko with tougher sanctions, or offer diplomatic engagement and, possibly, sanctions relief in exchange for the release of over 1,100 political prisoners?
The arguments reignited after U.S. Special Envoy Keith Kellogg met with Lukashenko in Minsk and secured the release of 14 prisoners, including Siarhei Tsikhanouski, a key opposition figure who had been considered among the least likely to be freed.
The Kyiv Independent spoke to both the supporters and those against reengaging with the Belarusian tyrant to show you what may await us next.
Widening rift
Following the recent political prisoner releases, Belarusian democratic opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya called for Lukashenko to be held "accountable, not coddled," ruffling feathers among some in the opposition who viewed the moment as an opportunity for diplomacy.
In a rare public standoff, Valery Kavaleuski, former member of Tsikhanouskaya's shadow cabinet, criticized her for both thanking and scolding the Trump team, fearing that the remarks might damage the "fragile" negotiating process.
Next, Ivan Kravtsov, a former election staff coordinator to imprisoned presidential candidate Viktar Babaryka, described Tsikhanouskaya's call in a recent interview with Politico to punish Lukashenko as hypocritical and dangerous. Siarhei Tsikhanouski himself then weighed in: although he had been asked to refrain from making public statements after his release, he lashed out at Lukashenko, saying the dictator deserved not only trial and punishment, but to be "impaled" for his crimes — a statement that shocked even some allies.
Shared goal, different approaches
The 1,100 current and 2,800 former political prisoners in Belarus are a bitter sore point for the politically engaged part of society. Everyone has a relative, friend, or former coworker who has been jailed, detained, or forced into hiding for participating in the 2020 anti-Lukashenko protests.
Eight political prisoners have died in custody to date, and 200 have been included in a humanitarian list of prisoners at a heightened risk of not surviving incarceration.
With political goals like fostering a national dialogue and holding free elections stalled, the public’s demands have shifted, says Alesia Rudnik, a political analyst who leads the Center for New Ideas think-tank.
In her view, the Belarusian democratic forces fared well in 2022, adapting to the new demand of responding to Russia's aggression against Ukraine while advocating on behalf of Belarusians. However, since then, they have not been as agile in addressing changing needs.
The core demands remain: freeing political prisoners, halting repression, and finding a space for civil society. But there the consensus ends. Even among former prisoners, tactics differ.
Journalist and former political prisoner Olga Loika, who spent almost a year under arrest, supports negotiations as a means to secure prisoner releases.
But Palina Sharenda-Panasiuk, an activist who was jailed for four years and spent over 270 days in solitary confinement, believes international pressure played a decisive role in her release. She wants tougher sanctions on Lukashenko's regime.
Focus on lives, not ideals
The calls to prioritize the release of political prisoners over broader demands for democratic reform began surfacing in 2021, and have only grown louder since then. They intensified after Belarusian political prisoners were left out of a major East-West prisoner swap, despite Lukashenko's direct involvement in the process.
Back in 2021, Kravtsov was practically the only major opposition figure promoting this stance. Now, his views are shared by ex-opposition cabinet members Valery Kavaleuski, Volha Harbunova, and the sister of jailed opposition leader Maria Kalesnikava, Tatsiana Khomich, who formed the "For the Release of Political Prisoners" initiative, which seeks to decouple humanitarian aims from political demands.
They argue that the window for regime change in Belarus has closed, and the priority now must be saving lives.
Kavaleuski argues that the exiled opposition should be tight-lipped when it comes to prisoner releases, since Lukashenko tends to automatically reject any ideas voiced by his critics. For example: a week after Tsikhanouski said in a press conference that President Donald Trump could achieve the release of all political prisoners in Belarus, Lukashenko publicly dismissed the idea.
A full halt on repression as a prerequisite for negotiations also appears unattainable: since 2020, over 50 laws have institutionalized various forms of repression, and these can't be instantly overturned, Kavaleuski says.
In dealings with Lukashenko, Kavaleuski opposes lifting sanctions on Belarus's military-industrial complex or capabilities that aid Russia's war against Ukraine. Yet, he does not agree that pausing sanctions on potash or the country's national carrier Belavia would indirectly support Russia's war effort.
"There is a danger that by imposing harsh sanctions against everything that moves, works, or speaks in Belarus, we will simply destroy society, the economy, and the entire country," Kavaleuski said in an interview with the Kyiv Independent.
The engagement camp also argues that isolating Lukashenko only pushes Belarus further into Russia's orbit.
"By the time (the regime) ends and the self-appointed ruler is gone, we may not even have a country left," Kavaleuski warns. "While we're fighting, figuratively speaking, with cockroaches in the house, we risk burning down the whole house."
For Belarusian political old-timers, this stance rings a bell. During a round of negotiations in 2015, the European Union secured an unwritten agreement: political prisoners were released, European sanctions were lifted, and U.S. sanctions were suspended. But while there were no criminal convictions of political prisoners, the repression never really stopped.
The policy of engagement with Lukashenko — to lure him away from Moscow and bring him closer to the West — is attributed to Lukashenko's late Foreign Minister Uladzimir Makey, and has been dubbed "Makeyization."
There have been several examples in the past when Europe "traded" political prisoners for political concessions. The most well-known today was West Germany's secret deal with the Soviet-dominated East Germany during the Cold War to "pay ransoms" to free more than 33,000 political prisoners held in the east. A lesser-known example involved Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu's communist regime, which traded its Jewish citizens for money from the United States and Israel, and its ethnic German citizens for money from West Germany.
But Alexander Friedman, a historian and lecturer of Eastern European history at Dusseldorf University in Germany, warns that these exchanges were no panacea. Past prisoner trades, like West Germany's ransom payments to East Germany, didn't improve the repressive state's human rights records, but just showed that democracies were prepared to pay ransoms.
"The idea that deals with regimes like this lead to liberalization is, at best, debatable," Friedman says. He also doubts the 2015 model could even be repeated today, citing Lukashenko's deeper reliance on Russia and the war in Ukraine.
Dialogue under pressure
In the early years after the suppression of the 2020 protests, releasing all prisoners was a condition of the exiled opposition for the start of a dialogue with the Lukashenko regime. Over time, the position has evolved: now the opposition' leadership is open to negotiations — but only if pressure on the regime is maintained.
"Pressure, combined with diplomatic efforts, is working," Franak Viachorka, chief advisor to Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, wrote after the opposition's internal spat over prisoner exchanges broke out into the public. He said Tsikhanouskaya's office remains in close contact with U.S. and European partners, and aims to turn sporadic prisoner releases into a more regular process.
The main objection to dealing with Lukashenko is that it might facilitate a "revolving door" of repression — in which released prisoners are simply replaced with new hostages taken for them to be traded. Since July 2024, around 300 prisoners have been released in multiple rounds of pardons and backchannel talks with the United States. But according to the Viasna Human Rights Center, although in 2025 alone 105 political prisoners were freed, another 167 individuals became political prisoners.
Pavel Latushka, Tsikhanouskaya's deputy in the opposition's United Transitional Cabinet, supports the strategy of communicating with Lukashenko while still maintaining pressure on the dictator.
"The purpose of the sanctions was not to bring down the regime," Latushka told the Kyiv Independent. "They are one of the tools of pressure aimed at bringing about change in (the regime's) repressive internal policies, and aggressive foreign policies."
Latushka dismissed the claims as propaganda narratives that easing sanctions could loosen Lukashenko's grip on power or bring Belarus closer to the West.
"(Lukashenko) has never sought a genuine dialogue," said Latushka, a former Belarusian ambassador and culture minister. "His policy was to take a step toward Europe (…), while turning his head to Moscow and asking for money. (…) And the Kremlin paid."
Abandoning demands for systemic change, Latushka argues, would betray the spirit of the 2020 uprising: "When we took to the streets in 2020 to protest, we had a broader goal, a strategically important goal — a free, democratic, independent Belarus, where there is no repression and no political prisoners," he says.
"It's not achievable under Lukashenko."
Viachorka also sees reducing the sanctions pressure as bolstering the regime to an extent. Yet, critics say harsh sanctions are already having the same effect, by harming average Belarusians while entrenching Lukashenko.
Meanwhile, experts suggest that while the position of the Belarusian democratic forces could influence the decisions made by their Western partners, its direct impact on the issue of negotiations is minimal, making the dispute mostly theoretical.
"Tsikhanouski can call for impalement every day, but if Lukashenko sees an opportunity to normalize relations with the Americans, and the context of U.S.-Russian relations allows it, he will continue to move in this direction," Friedman says.
Political analyst Alesia Rudnik disagrees, pointing to Lukashenko's notoriously thin skin.
"State propaganda tracks the opposition's agenda closely," she said. "It's likely he's briefed on it, and he may back out of a deal if someone makes a statement (he doesn't like)."
Unrealistic expectations
With the Trump administration having dispatched a special envoy to Minsk, the humanitarian approach briefly became possible, Rudnik notes. But hopes for sustained engagement are waning as Trump's reported frustrations with Moscow grow.
The European Union, meanwhile, remains cautious after its experience with Lukashenko in 2015, when it decided to suspend most of its sanctions against Belarus to foster reengagement. The action was rebuffed by the Lukashenko regime, which made little effort to improve its human rights record or reform its repressive political system.
EU diplomats, while welcoming the recent releases, have demanded the unconditional release of all political prisoners. Rather than easing sanctions, the EU Commission is debating its 18th package of sanctions on Russia and Belarus, which will possibly include new sectoral measures, underscoring the stark contrast to Washington's policy of rapprochement.
RFE/RL political analyst Valer Karbalevich adds that if the opposition centers its mission solely on prisoner releases, it risks ceasing to be a political force, and becoming just another NGO.
While Trump's unorthodox diplomacy has briefly brought Belarus's political prisoners back into the international spotlight, reviving hope among thousands of Belarusians inside and outside the country, with no internal leverage and no clear pathway from repression to reform, the Belarusian opposition remains reliant on external actors and unpredictable power shifts.
Moreover, almost a month after the prisoner release was secured, it remains unclear what Lukashenko stands to gain from it. Friedman sees this as a sign that the prisoner releases may have been a "down payment" — a gesture to signal openness to further talks.
Lukashenko loyalist and former dissident Yury Vaskrasienski has indirectly confirmed this, claiming that no further releases would be possible until "the other side" fulfills its promises. In a public conversation with Viasna human rights activist Leanid Sudalenka, Vaskrasienski outlined the "pricing" for the release of other high-profile prisoners.
"Open the skies and (the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales) Bialiatski will be free," Vaskrasienski said, voicing an unrealistic demand for the removal of a restriction imposed not for human rights abuses, but after the forced landing of a European commercial flight in Minsk in 2021.
Sudalenka told the Kyiv Independent he believes Vaskrasienski was relaying Belarusian KGB demands.
He also underscores that the "revolving door" of repression will not improve the human rights situation in Belarus. Some mechanism to ensure that restrictions could be reimposed if new political prisoners were detained must be found, he says.
But talking to the Lukashenko regime is a necessary evil, he believes.
"As a former political prisoner and human rights advocate, I'm ready to talk to the Devil himself if, as a result of that conversation, even a single political prisoner regains their freedom," Sudalenka said.
