By Galina Korol | 2025-12-11

Frail, tired and a little disoriented but visibly relieved -- that was how Maria Misyuk appeared in the first images after her release from a Belarusian prison.

"I thought they were taking me into the forest to be shot," she said after being escorted out of the facility and placed on a bus. For most of the journey, she did not realize she was heading home to Ukraine.

Misyuk, born in 2007, moved with her family to Belarus in 2022.

In March 2024, at age 16, Belarusian security forces seized her from her home and accused her of organizing an anarchist cell intent on sabotage.

ONT, a state-run TV channel, aired a film titled Children in the Crosshairs: Recruited by the Enemy, portraying her as founder of a "Black Nightingales" group and a liaison for Ukrainian intelligence.

A court later sentenced her to 13 years in a minimum-security prison under an "act of terrorism" statute. She turned 18 behind bars, and until recently her whereabouts were unknown.

On November 22, Ukraine's Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War (CHTPW) announced that 31 Ukrainian civilians had been repatriated from Belarus, where they had served sentences ranging from two to 11 years. The group included people with cancer and other serious illnesses, ages 18 to 58.

Bohdan Okhrimenko, head of the CHTPW secretariat, said the release resulted from agreements between US President Donald Trump and Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka.

He said White House Special Envoy Keith Kellogg and US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Christopher Smith took part in negotiations.

Belarus provided a list of prisoners they were willing to send to Ukraine.

"The agreements that were reached have been fulfilled," Okhrimenko said, as quoted by Suspilne Novyny.

Among those freed was 30-year-old Lidiya Gruk, initially accused of "terrorism" before the charge was downgraded to "intelligence activities." She received four years.

Gruk said her husband had helped Ukrainians after the full-scale invasion; he remains imprisoned, serving 24 years in a maximum-security facility. Their four children live with their grandmother in Belarus.

"I didn't take any actions… I knew my husband was helping Ukrainians, that he was communicating with them. I knew he was on Ukraine's side," she told reporters.

Vanishing behind bars

Information about Ukrainians detained in Belarus arrives in fragments, human rights activists said.

"It's quite fragmentary," Tetiana Pechonchyk, head of the ZMINA Center for Human Rights, told Kontur.

Belarus has built a system that erases prisoners from public view, making verification nearly impossible.

Several detentions became known only because the prisoners' faces appeared in propaganda broadcasts.

"That is how we learned… that criminal cases had been opened and that certain sentences had been handed down," Pechonchyk said.

For the regime, these detainees do not exist as foreign citizens, she added; they disappear into the wider machinery of repression.

ZMINA previously identified at least 15 Ukrainians in Belarusian prisons on fabricated espionage charges or tied to the 2020–21 protests. Human rights groups knew of only four among the 31 recently released.

"At least eleven more Ukrainians are still in Belarusian prisons," Pechonchyk said, warning the actual number may be higher because there is no information about some detainees.

Prisoners are almost entirely cut off from the outside world. Belarusian postal rules prevent people from sending letters unless they can prove family ties.

"If you have no such proof, the post office will simply not deliver the letter or parcel," Pechonchyk said.

With almost no independent lawyers left, detainees without relatives effectively vanish.

Belarusian investigators rely on identical allegations: "intelligence activities," "espionage," "attempted sabotage." Courts offer no real defense. Some sentences reach 20 years in maximum-security prisons.

These are not isolated cases, Pechonchyk said, but part of a vast mechanism targeting Belarusians and foreigners alike.

A market for hostages

Weaponizing foreign nationals is a long-standing tactic for the Lukashenka government.

Vladimir Zhygar, spokesman for BelPol, an organization formed by former Belarusian security officers, said political prisoners were "trading assets, "not individuals.

"Having political prisoners is ordinary business for Lukashenka. He has had them for all 30 years. For him, they're a commodity, "Zhygar told Kontur.

Repression escalated sharply after the 2020 protests. The Viasna Human Rights Center recognizes about 1,300 political prisoners, but Zhygar estimated the real number could reach 4,500.

Families often stay silent, hoping for leniency. Authorities also mask political motives by charging detainees with "economic crimes" or narcotics offenses. Human rights groups learn details of sentences a year or more after they are imposed.

Detaining foreign citizens, Zhygar said, serves as a means to "force communication" with governments that otherwise shun Minsk.

"Being isolated from the civilized world, Lukashenka uses hostages as a communication channel," he said.

But human rights advocates warned that easing sanctions without demanding an end to repression accomplishes nothing.

"People are being traded for sanctions relief. But people will still be detained, people will be imprisoned," Zhygar said.

Without structural change, he added, hostage exchanges simply strengthen a system in which "the repression never ceases."