FILE - Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko holds a candle while visiting the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Valaam monastery with Russian President Vladimir Putin, on Valaam Island in Ladoga Lake in Russia on July 25, 2024. (Alexander Kazakov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File)
FILE - Ales Bialiatski, the head of Belarusian Viasna rights group, stands in a defendants' cage during a court session in Minsk, Belarus, on Nov. 2, 2011. As the biggest East-West prisoner exchange since the Cold War unfolded, the Belarusian opposition and rights activists couldn't hide their disappointment that it didn't include a single Belarusian political prisoner. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits, File)
This photo combination shows Belarus political prisoners, clockwise from top left, Viasna human rights group founder and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski in , Belarus' opposition activist Maria Kolesnikova, journalist Andrzej Poczobut and opposition activist Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya holding a portrait of her jailed husband Syarhey Tsikhanousky. (AP Photo)
FILE - Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, center, holds a portrait of her jailed husband, Siarhei Tsikhanouski, at a protest demanding freedom for political prisoners in front of the Belarus Embassy, in Vilnius, Lithuania, on March 8, 2024. Tsikhanouskaya expressed disappointment that last week’s East-West prisoner swap failed to free any Belarusian prisoners. (AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis, File)