Among the released prisoners are several high-profile opposition activists, a journalist at the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and 14 foreign citizens from Latvia, Poland, Germany, France and the United Kingdom.
I'm really in total shock, but of course I'm glad, says RFE/RL's released journalist Ihar Losik to the news site after arriving in the capital of neighboring country Lithuania, Vilnius.
The news that over five years of imprisonment, partly in isolation, was over came without warning.
They put me in a car with handcuffs and a bag over my head, Losik says.
Trying to appease
The release is said to be the result of American and Lithuanian diplomatic efforts.
Belarus, a close ally of Russia, is subject to extensive sanctions from the West due to systematic human rights abuses and because Belarus provided its territory to the Kremlin when Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
However, in the past year, the country's dictator Alexander Lukashenko has tried to appease Europe and the US – including through the release of political prisoners – in order to get sanctions relief.
Reopen embassy
Thursday's announcement that about 50 prisoners will be released was preceded by a meeting between Lukashenko and US envoy John Coale. In a video published in the state-owned Belarusian media, Coale is heard saying that Washington is lifting its sanctions against the state-owned Belarusian airline Belavia – and that the US will try to reopen its embassy in Minsk.
In June, Sergei Tikhonovsky, the husband of the country's opposition leader Svetlana Tikhonovskaya, was unexpectedly released from his imprisonment.
According to opposition groups, however, more than 1,000 people are still being held in Belarus on political grounds.
