After years of the U.S. trying to isolate Russia’s closest ally, a meeting with Belarus’s president points to better relations, raising hopes of loosening his repression and his embrace of Moscow.

The below-the-radar American visit to Minsk, the Belarusian capital, on Wednesday came just a day after President Trump had a long telephone call with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Both events signaled Washington’s departure from a yearslong policy of trying to isolate leaders out of favor in the West because of their repressive policies and the war in Ukraine.

After talks with Mr. Lukashenko, Christopher W. Smith, a deputy assistant secretary of state, and two other American officials drove to a village near the border with Lithuania. There, courtesy of the Belarusian KGB, three people who had been jailed — an American and two Belarusian political prisoners — were waiting to be picked up.

. . .

The next step, Mr. Smith told a gathering of Western diplomats on Thursday in Vilnius, according to people who attended, is a possible grand bargain under which Mr. Lukashenko would release a slew of political prisoners, including prominent ones. In return, the United States would relax sanctions on Belarusian banks and exports of potash, a key ingredient in fertilizer, of which Belarus is a major producer.

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  • breakfastmtnOPEnglish
    17·
    7 days ago

    The potash exports should probably be seen as an attack on Canada. Canada supplies nearly all US imports of potash and increasing Belarusian imports will both give the US another tool to damage the Canadian economy and limit Canada’s ability to strike back in a trade war.

    • Paragone@lemmy.worldEnglish
      151·
      7 days ago

      it isn’t a “trade war”, it’s an operation to force Canada into bankruptcy, so that it can be claimed & the people currently populating Canada suddenly become “illegal aliens in America”, & deported.

      The Liberal Party handed Trump the near-bankruptcy of Canada, & now all Trump has to do is finish the job.

      He meant it when he identified that he wants Greenland, Canada, Panama, etc, as possessions…

      he’s got the clout, & neither political-parties nor moneyarchy cares, really, who the current string-pullers are: all they care about is that nobody & nothing compete successfully with political-parties or with moneyarchy, respectively, so they have that as their alliance…

      Oligarchy, lobbying owning the “representatives”, & political-parties which couldn’t put national-health 1st if it was ordered by G-D.

      I wouldn’t be surprised if, in a future escalation, he put sanctions on any corporation or country which did significant trade with Canada, just to enforce the collapse, that his guns could then come in “saving”.

      “war by other means” is all it is.

      Same as his not bothering allowing Ukraina to have any say in the negotiations over Ukraina’s release from Russia’s genocide-war…

      it’s normal, now, this kind of only-authoritarianism-has-any-say “governing”, in the countries “rising”…

      Considered-reasoning’s being extinguished, globally: only extremism’s going to remain, within 3 years?

      it’s looking more & more like that…

      _ /\ _