Belarus has freed 123 prisoners, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski and leading opposition figure Maria Kalesnikava, in exchange for sanctions relief from the United States.

John Coale, the US special envoy for Belarus, announced the lifting of sanctions on potash on Saturday after two days of talks with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in Minsk.

Belarus is a leading global producer of potash, a key component in fertilisers,

The prisoner release was by far the biggest by Lukashenko since Trump’s administration opened talks this year with the close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Western governments had previously shunned him because of his crushing of dissent and backing for Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Separately, Ukraine’s prisoner of war coordination c

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