Poland and Belarus conduct prisoner swap, including Polish journalist Poczobut

Apr 28, 2026 | Defence, Politics, Society

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

This is a breaking news story and may be updated as more information becomes available..

Poland and Belarus have carried out a prisoner exchange under a deal negotiated with the support of the United States.

Among those handed over to Poland is Andrzej Poczobut, a journalist and leading figure in Belarus’s large ethnic Polish minority who has been imprisoned on political charges since 2021. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk shared a picture of himself greeting Poczobut at the border.

Belarusian state news agency Belta reports that each side was handing over five prisoners to the other, following “complex and lengthy negotiations” between Belarus’s State Security Committee (KGB) and Poland’s Foreign Intelligence Agency (AW).

It did not name any of those involved in the exchange, but said they included “citizens of Belarus who carried out particularly important missions in the interests of national security and the defence capability of our country”.

Belarus, which is a close ally of Russia, has tense diplomatic relations with Poland, which has criticised Minsk over its support for Russia’s war in Ukraine as well as for its involvement in “hybrid activities” against Poland itself, including engineering a migration crisis on the border.

 

In a post on social media, US President Donald Trump’s special envoy for Belarus, John Coale, confirmed that he and his team had helped secure the release of three Poles and two Moldovans from Belarus.

“Under President Trump, America shows up for its allies and delivers diplomatic victories no one else can,” he added. While Coale did not name any of those released, the US ambassador to Poland, Thomas Rose, noted that Poczobut was among them.

Poland’s president, Karol Nawrocki, and foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, issued messages of thanks to Trump and the US for facilitating the exchange.

“This day would not have been possible without President Donald Trump and his decisions,” said Sikorski, speaking at a press conference in Warsaw alongside Coale.

Poczobut was detained in 2021 along with other leading figures in Belarus’s ethnic-Polish community. He was held in pretrial detention for 460 days before being sentenced in 2023 to eight years in a penal colony for “inciting hatred” and “the rehabilitation of Nazism”.

The allegations against Poczobut are widely regarded as politically motivated and have been condemned by Poland, the European Union and a range of human rights groups. The poor conditions in which he was held, which have contributed to Poczobut’s declining health, have also been criticised.

Last year, Poczobut was awarded the Sakharov Prize, the EU’s highest distinction in the field of human rights, with the European Parliament hailing him as “a beacon for all who refuse to be silenced”.

On Tuesday afternoon, Bartosz Wieliński, deputy editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, a newspaper for which Poczobut works, shared a photograph of him and Poczobut returning from the border to Warsaw.

Following news of Poczobut’s release, exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya thanked the US, Poland and the EU for fighting for his release.

However, another leader of the exiled opposition, Pavel Latushka, noted that 834 political prisoners remain behind bars in Belarus. “We must continue fighting for the freedom of each and every one of them,” he wrote.

The US has been leading efforts to secure the release of prisoners from Belarus. Last month, 250 were freed in exchange for the easing of US sanctions on Minsk. Similar releases took place last year, including of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski in December.

At the time of writing, the identities of the other nine individuals involved in today’s exchange have not been confirmed by Poland, Belarus or the US. However, Moldovan President Maia Sandu has confirmed that two of them are citizens of her country.

Meanwhile, Russian state news agency TASS, citing the Federal Security Service (FSB), reports that one of those handed to Belarus is Alexander Butyagin.

He is a Russian archaeologist who was detained in Poland last year at the request of Ukraine, which is seeking his extradition on charges of carrying out illegal excavations in Russian-occupied Crimea.

Polish broadcaster Radio Zet also reports unofficially that another of those transferred to Poland is Grzegorz Gaweł, a Polish monk detained in Belarus last year on espionage charges.

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Donald Tusk/X

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