Trump Offers Russia Sanctions Relief Using His Belarusian Model

The negotiations between the US and Russia over the release of political prisoners appear to be a humanitarian mission. But if you set aside the humanitarian rhetoric and look at the timing, the price of the exchanges, the people conducting the negotiations, and the parallel economic decisions, a very different picture emerges. There are enough signs to suggest that political prisoners are being used as a cheap and politically attractive asset to cover up reputation-damaging deals.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. This is not a “humanitarian track” at all. It is potentially a sanctions-arbitrage mechanism using prisoners as currency. In the current US-Russia track, Russia appears to have played its hand skillfully: it seized on the argument the US administration uses to save face and turned it into a tool of its own. The first story is about Belarusian potash and 250 political prisoners – but in reality, it is about pressure on Canada and a potential deal with Gazprom. John Coale called the release of 250 Belarusian political prisoners a “significant humanitarian milestone,” while also describing it as the result of “direct, hard-nosed diplomacy.” But let’s look at what is actually happening. In March 2026, Lukashenko released 250 people, and the US lifted sanctions on Belarusian potash producers. By September, the US economic interest had become clear: President Trump started talking about a “massive deal” to buy Belarusian potash at a lower price than Canadian potash, explicitly linking it to the interests of American farmers and ranchers. Other Topics of Interest Russia Can Still Finance Its War, but Costs and Risks Are Rising, KSE Institute Says Russia retains substantial capacity to finance the war, but a widening budget deficit, depleted fiscal buffers, higher borrowing costs and growing pressure on banks are narrowing its room for maneuver, KSE Institute says. Canada supplies the vast majority of US potash imports, so Belarusian potash gives Washington additional leverage in its trade relations with Ottawa. At the same time, the US is not facing a potash shortage – the interest lies primarily in lower prices, diversification, and strengthening Washington’s negotiating position with Canada. At the same time, the deal creates an economic bridge to Russia. Because sanctions restrict transit through Lithuania, Belarusian potash is routed through Russian infrastructure. The chain therefore becomes broader: sanctions relief → Belarusian potash returns to the market → Russia’s involvement → a new US-Belarus-Russia trade and economic channel. Political prisoners provide the reputational cover. And on Sept. 29, Lukashenko proposed the next step: a joint US-Belarusian nitrogen fertilizer plant, with the project already preliminarily agreed with Gazprom. The second story is about creating and consolidating a Russia-US negotiating channel. February 2025. The US gets Marc Fogel, an American teacher imprisoned on drug charges. Russia gets Alexander Vinnik. But Vinnik is an entirely different kind of asset. He ran BTC-e, one of the world’s key cryptocurrency money-laundering platforms. More than $9 billion in transactions passed through BTC-e, with US authorities linking the platform to ransomware, hacking, narcotics, identity theft, and other criminal activity. Now look at the timing. Fogel was released on Feb. 11, 2025. On Feb. 18, one week later, US-Russia talks took place in Riyadh, launching Ukraine talks, diplomatic normalization, and economic cooperation. The following day, on Feb. 19, Dmitriev was already talking about the return of American companies to Russia. Moscow got a valuable Russian national back. President Trump got a powerful television image: “American brought home.” And Witkoff gained a personal channel to Moscow. In practical terms, the Fogel-Vinnik exchange functioned as an opening ritual for a direct Trump-Putin/Witkoff negotiating channel. In the exchange of Ksenia Karelina for Artur Petrov, Russia’s gain was far more concrete. Karelina, a Russian-American citizen, was sentenced to 12 years in prison over a small donation to an organization helping Ukraine. In return, Moscow got Petrov back – a participant in a network designed to circumvent technology sanctions. According to the US Department of Justice, he worked for Electrocom VPK, which used shell companies to purchase microcontrollers and integrated circuits in the US for Russian weapons manufacturers. Such components are used in missiles, drones, electronic warfare systems, and military communications. So Russia did not simply get one of its citizens back, but rather an operator in a procurement network serving its defense industry, while also ending his criminal prosecution in the US. Washington, meanwhile, got a politically powerful case: the release of a young American citizen sentenced to 12 years for donating to Ukraine. Moscow got an operationally valuable person – Washington got a politically valuable release. The release of Robert Gilman in August 2026 is interesting precisely because the US officially said it made no concessions to Russia. Yet Moscow still gained a diplomatic asset: Witkoff publicly thanked Putin for his “personal engagement,” while US officials linked the decision, among other things, to the personal relationship between Putin and President Trump. Russia gave up a prisoner who no longer held much value for it, while allowing the Trump administration to demonstrate another result of personal diplomacy. The timing makes this gesture particularly revealing. On Sept. 5, Witkoff and Kushner met with Putin, Dmitriev held a separate three-hour discussion with them, and later that month he traveled to Washington for talks, including contacts with the Treasury Department and Department of Energy regarding future US-Russian energy projects. Gilman’s release can therefore be viewed as a cheap signal of goodwill aimed at sustaining the personal Putin-Trump/Witkoff/Kushner channel: Moscow received no material concession, but invested an asset of little value to itself in political capital in Washington. The third story is about sanctions relief and economic cooperation with Russia. Once the negotiating track has been established and legitimized, the Trump administration faces another problem: how to begin easing sanctions and economically normalizing relations with Russia while Russia continues its war against Ukraine. This is where the Coale-Muratov initiative on Russian political prisoners comes in. The Atlantic explicitly writes that the release of political prisoners could give Washington grounds for sanctions relief that would open the way for financial transactions and business deals with Russia. Potential areas include Russian oil, diesel, rare-earth metals, and other commodities. For the Kremlin, such an arrangement is particularly advantageous because it allows Russia to obtain sanctions concessions without making concessions on Ukraine. Russia can release people it imprisoned itself, Washington can present this as a diplomatic achievement and use it to justify limited sanctions relief, and that, in turn, can make broader financial, energy, and raw materials deals possible. This is not a “humanitarian track” at all. It is potentially a sanctions-arbitrage mechanism that uses prisoners as currency. And the most interesting part is that the American side does not deny it. In an interview with RFE/RL, Coale is asked directly: Lukashenko is trading prisoners for sanctions relief – does that not encourage further arrests. Coale’s answer is essentially that if Lukashenko trades prisoners for sanctions relief, “that’s fine with me.” What is particularly notable is that Coale himself selects which sanctions to propose lifting and then clears them with the Secretary of State or the President. In negotiations with Russia, prisoners, sanctions, and energy are already moving through the same negotiating channel involving Dmitriev, Witkoff, and Kushner. This is especially revealing given Dmitriev’s role: he is not a humanitarian negotiator, but the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund and one of Moscow’s key representatives in talks on restoring economic relations with the US. The release of prisoners increasingly looks like a justification for launching the normalization of relations with Russia – the real strategic objective for part of the American negotiating team. For the Kremlin, this is an almost ideal transaction: release people it imprisoned itself and try to convert that cheap domestic resource into much more valuable external concessions – sanctions relief, access to capital, technology, and energy markets – without ending the war or making concessions on Ukraine. For the Trump administration, the same releases create visible diplomatic victories and a political justification for sanctions exemptions and economic deals it has already shown interest in. Belarus has demonstrated how this model works: the regime creates hostages, releases them in batches, and receives real economic concessions in return. If this mechanism is applied to Russia, political prisoners will become the currency with which the Kremlin will pay for normalization with the US without changing its behavior in the war. Disclaimer: Reprinted with the author’s permission from his X page. See the original here. The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.