Belarus freed Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski, key opposition figure Maria Kolesnikova and dozens of other prisoners on Saturday, capping two days of talks with Washington aimed at improving ties and getting crippling U.S. sanctions lifted on a key Belarusian agricultural export.

The U.S. announced earlier Saturday that it was lifting sanctions on Belarus' potash sector. In exchange, President Alexander Lukashenko pardoned 123 prisoners, Belarus' state news agency, Belta, reported. 

A close ally of Russia, Minsk has faced Western isolation and sanctions for years.

Lukashenko has ruled the nation of 9.5 million with an iron fist for more than three decades, and the country has been repeatedly sanctioned by the West for its crackdown on human rights and for allowing Moscow to use its territory in the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Belarus has released hundreds of prisoners since July 2024.

Bialiatski, a human rights advocate who founded Viasna, was in jail when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022 along with the prominent Russian rights group Memorial and Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties. He was later convicted of smuggling and financing actions that violated public order — charges that were widely denounced as politically motivated — and sentenced to 10 years in 2023.

“I traveled across all of Belarus from east to west with my eyes blindfolded, and naturally, I still can't quite recover, because it's a huge emotional shock for me. During this time, I only managed to talk to my wife,” Bialiatski told journalists, who met him outside the U.S. embassy in Vilnius. “I’m incredibly happy to be free.“

Kolesnikova, meanwhile, was a key figure in the mass protests that rocked Belarus in 2020, and is a close ally of an opposition leader in exile, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. 

Known for her close-cropped hair and trademark gesture of forming a heart with her hands, Kolesnikova became an even greater symbol of resistance when Belarusian authorities tried to deport her in September 2020. Driven to the Ukrainian border, she briefly broke away from security forces at the frontier, tore up her passport and walked back into Belarus.

The 43-year-old professional flautist was convicted in 2021 on charges including conspiracy to seize power and sentenced to 11 years in prison. 

Among the others who were released, according to Viasna, was Viktar Babaryka — an opposition figure who had sought to challenge Lukashenko in the 2020 presidential election, widely seen as rigged, before being convicted and sentenced to 14 years in prison on charges he rejected as political. 

Viasna reported that the group's imprisoned advocates, Valiantsin Stefanovic and Uladzimir Labkovich, and prominent opposition figure Maxim Znak were also freed. But it later said it was clarifying its report about Stefanovic's release, and Bialiatski told the AP that Stefanovic had not been freed, though he hopes he will be soon.

Most of those released were sent to Ukraine, Franak Viachorka, Tsikhanouskaya’s senior adviser, told the AP.

Eight or nine others, including Bialiatski, were sent to Lithuania on Saturday, and more prisoners will be taken to the Baltic country in the next few days, Viachorka said. 

Ukrainian authorities confirmed that Belarus had handed over 114 civilians. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed that five of them are Ukrainian nationals. 

Freed Belarusian nationals “at their request” and “after being given necessary medical treatment” will be taken to Poland and Lithuania, Ukrainian authorities said.

AP video by Siarhei Satsiuk