TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Belarusian opposition leader in exile Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya on Thursday said 224 political prisoners in Belarus must be freed urgently, and called on Western countries to negotiate their release with the Belarusian authorities.
Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko in 2020 unleashed a brutal crackdown on dissent in response to mass protests that broke out after an election that handed him his sixth term in office and was denounced by the opposition and the West as rigged.
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