“Thanks to the leadership of Potus (President of the United States), Belarus released another unjustly detained US citizen. No president did so much, as quickly as to ensure the safety of Americans abroad,” said Rubio on Wednesday on Wednesday on Platform X.
As they passed, among others CNN representatives of the US administration, the released prisoner is Youras Ziankovich, a lawyer with US citizenship. The man was kidnapped in 2021 in Moscow and taken to Belarus, where he was accused of for participation in an attempt to overthrow the Alaksander Lukashenko regime.
Aleksander Łukashenko about the conspiracy of the services
Lukashenko himself claimed that Ziankovich was part of the plan of American services, including killing him and kidnapping his children. The American authorities denied the Belarusian claims, and in February this year. They officially considered the prisoner wrongly detained.
According to a representative of the ministry of diplomacy cited by the CNN, the release of a man did not take place as part of the exchange, and after releasing from prison, Ziankovich was transported to Lithuania.
This is the third US citizen released by the Lukashenko regime. In the case of the previous two, Anastasia Nuhfer and an anonymous American, US diplomats also claimed that Lukashenko “got nothing” for their release and it was a one -sided gesture aimed at improving Minsk's relations with Washington.
