In an unexpected behind-the-scenes move, a US senior diplomat has held a meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, the New York Times reported on Saturday, describing it as very “below the radar” and as part of longshot efforts at wooing Belarus away from Moscow.
The meeting happened Wednesday, involving Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Christopher W. Smith meeting with President Lukashenko in the capital of Minsk, to jump-start potential improved bilateral relations, also in context of the Trump administration trying to rapidly pursue a Ukraine peace deal with President Putin.
It was the first such meeting with a top State Department official traveling to Minsk in a half-decade, the newspaper noted.
Smith has described efforts to strike a “grand bargain” in hopes of gaining the return of an imprisoned American citizen, and it has apparently begun with some success, per the NY Times report:
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.
As darkness fell, the Americans and the freed prisoners drove back across the border to Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital. Speaking outside the U.S. Embassy there on Wednesday evening, Mr. Smith hailed the successful completion of what he called “a special operation,” describing the prisoners’ release as a “huge win and a response to President Trump’s peace through strength agenda.”
Journalist Andrey Kuznechyk and activist Alena Maushuk were freed, with the US citizen not having been identified at this point. […]
— Read More: www.zerohedge.com
