Andrzej Poczobut, a Polish-Belarusian journalist and community activist who spent five years in a Belarusian penal colony, has been freed as part of a US-brokered multi-country prisoner exchange. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk confirmed the release on social media, posting a photograph of himself greeting Poczobut at the Polish-Belarusian border with the words: "Welcome to your Polish home, my friend." The deal involved Belarus and Poland each releasing five detainees, with nationals from Russia, Moldova, Belarus and Poland among those freed. Two Moldovan citizens, confirmed by Moldovan President Maia Sandu to have been detained by Russia on espionage charges, were also released as part of the broader arrangement.
Poczobut was a correspondent for the prominent Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza and a leading figure within Poland's minority community in Belarus — a country in eastern Europe bordering Poland to its west and Russia to its east. He was arrested in 2021 after extensively covering the mass protests that erupted following the 2020 presidential election, whose results handing Alexander Lukashenko — in power since 1994 — another term in office were widely condemned as fraudulent by the opposition and Western governments. In 2023, he was sentenced to eight years in a penal colony on charges of inciting unrest and undermining national security, in a trial broadly criticised as politically motivated. In recent years, concerns had grown about his deteriorating health; he suffered from a serious heart condition and was reportedly placed in solitary confinement on multiple occasions, sometimes for periods of up to six months.
The swap was described by Tusk as the "finale of a two-year long intricate diplomatic game," with the Belarusian side having once reversed course less than 24 hours before a previously agreed date. Talks were led by John Coale, Donald Trump's special envoy to Belarus. Among the others released to Poland were Grzegorz Gaweł, a Polish Catholic priest, and an unnamed Belarusian individual who had cooperated with Polish security services. On the Belarusian side, the freed prisoners included Russian archaeologist Aleksandr Butjagin, who had been arrested in Poland in December and was sought by Ukraine over alleged illegal excavations in Russian-occupied Crimea, as well as the wife of a Russian soldier serving in Transnistria, the Russian-backed breakaway region of Moldova.
The release carries significance well beyond one individual case. Poczobut was awarded the European Parliament's 2025 Sakharov Prize — the EU's most prestigious human rights award — alongside Georgian journalist Mzia Amaglobeli. Parliament President Roberta Metsola described both as "symbols of the struggle for freedom and democracy" who "have paid a heavy price for speaking truth to power." Trump's envoy Coale stated that up to 900 political prisoners remain in Belarus and vowed that the United States would not stop "until we get every last one of them." Human rights organisations estimate that more than 800 political detainees are still held in the country. The swap is part of a broader diplomatic effort to bring Belarus closer to the West, with the US having already eased some sanctions against Minsk in exchange for earlier prisoner releases.