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Secretary Marc Rubio On Sunday he announced the release of an American citizen who had been imprisoned in Belarus as the controversy over the ongoing elections of the Eastern Europe nation was alike.
Accreding the leadership of President Donald Trump, Rubio said in a publication in X that “Belarus has just released unilaterally an innocent American, Anastassia Nuhfer, who was taken under Joe Biden!”
Rubio added that Christopher Smith, Deputy Secretary of the State Department for Eastern Europe and regional affairs, “of our team did a great job in this.”
“”Peace through force“, wrote Rubio, who served at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for 14 years before being sworn as a new Secretary of State for Trump last week.
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Marco Rubio during his oath ceremony on Tuesday, January 21, 2025. (Oliver Contreras/Sipa/Bloomberg through Getty Images)
No more information was published immediately about Nuhfer or his release, as some social media users marveled at not knowing that an American had been imprisoned in Belarus during the administration of former President Joe Biden.
In the meantime, Belarus celebrates the national election on Sunday. President Alexander Lukassenko, a loyal The Russian leader Vladimir PutinIt only faces a symbolic opposition and is expected to obtain another mandate in addition to its three decades in power.
The most consequent opponents of Lukassenko, many of whom are imprisoned or exiled abroad for their relentless repression against dissent and freedom of expression, are describing the farce election, such as the last 2020 that triggered months of months. Unprecedented protests in the country’s history of 9 million people.
The repression was more than 65,000 arrests, with thousands of times, which led to the western sentences and sanctions, according to Associated Press.
The country has about 1,300 political prisoners, including the Nobel Peace Prize Wings bialiatskiFounder of the Viasna Human Rights Center.
Since July, Lukaixenko has pardoned more than 250 people. At the same time, the authorities have sought to uproot the dissent with the arrest of hundreds more in shakes against family and friends of political prisoners.
Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko at the center visits the Minsk automobile plant in Minsk, Bielarus, on January 21, 2025. (Presidential Press Service of Belarus via AP, File)
Authorities detained 188 people only last month, said Viasna. Activists and those who donated money to opposition groups have been called by police and forced to sign documents that said they were warned that they did not participate in non -sanctioned demonstrations, said rights defenders, according to AP. .
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The opposition leader in Sviatlana exile Tsikhanouskaya, who fled Belarus under the pressure of government after challenging the President in 2020, told the AP that Sunday’s election was “a senseless farce, a ritual of Lukassenko. “
Voters should cut off all voters, he said, and world leaders should not recognize the result of a country “where all independent media and opposition parties have been destroyed and prisons are filled by Political prisoners. “
“The repressions have become even more brutal as this vote approaches without the option, but Lukaixenko acts as if hundreds of thousands were still in front of their palace,” he said.
The European Parliament urged the European Union to reject the result of the election. The UE’s highest diplomatic diplomatic Kaja Kallas described the vote of “a blatant faces democracy.”
The leader of the Opposition in Exile of Belarus, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, pauses while speaking during a press conference, on the day of the presidential election of Belarus, before the start of the “March of the Belarus” in Warsaw in Warsaw , Poland, on January 26, 2025. (Agencja Wyborcza.pl/obert Kowalewski via Reuters)
Shortly after voting on Minsk on Sunday, Lukaixenko told journalists that he was not looking for the EU’s recognition or approval.
“The most important thing for me is that Belarusians recognize these elections and end peacefully, as they began,” he said.
The Media Freedom Control Body Reporters Without Borders filed a complaint against Lukaixenko to the International Criminal Court for its repression against freedom of expression that led to the arrest of 397 journalists since 2020. He said that 43 are in prison.
Two years after the disappearance of the Soviet Union, Lukaixenko took office in 1994 and has won the nickname “the last dictator in Europe”. His iron government had consolidated with Russia’s political subsidies and support, a close ally.
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Let Moscow use his territory overrun Ukraine In 2022, he even houses some of Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons, but he still campaigned with the slogan “Peace and Security”, arguing that he has saved Belarus from the war.
“It is better to have a dictatorship as Belarus than a democracy like Ukraine,” said Lukassenko.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
