Who Andrzej Poczobut Is and Why Belarus Released Him

When Andrzej Poczobut crossed from Belarus into Poland last Tuesday, he barely resembled the broad-shouldered, sharply dressed journalist familiar to Polish readers just five years earlier.

Images that swiftly spread from the border crossing in eastern Poland showed a hollowed, gaunt man with a shaved head.

Five years in cold, concrete prison cells — including six months in solitary confinement last year — had left him looking far older than 53.

His freedom, secured as part of a 10-person prisoner exchange, came after months of intense negotiations involving Polish, American, Belarusian and Russian officials. Negotiators from Romania and Moldova also took part.

A figure within Belarus’s Polish minority, which accounts for about 3% of the population, Mr Poczobut had for years spoken out against the rule of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and the regime’s human rights abuses.

The swap marked the latest step by Alexander Lukashenko to seek better relations with the West

The journalist had clashed with Mr Lukashenko before. The Belarusian leader, in power since 1994, remains one of Russia’s staunchest allies.

In 2011, Mr Poczobut was charged with insulting the Belarusian president and given a three-year suspended sentence.

“He was not afraid to write the truth about Belarus and name Lukashenko as a dictator, which he was once jailed for,” Bartosz Wieliński, deputy editor of Gazeta Wyborcza and a friend of Mr Poczobut, told RTÉ News.

Mr Poczobut kept reporting, focusing on the history of Belarus’s Polish community, including the role of Polish partisans in his native Grodno region after it was absorbed into the Soviet Union in 1945.

In the summer of 2020, he wrote about the regime’s brutal suppression of mass pro-democracy demonstrations after Mr Lukashenko declared victory in what was widely seen as a rigged election.

A year later, Belarusian authorities arrested Mr Poczobut again, accusing him of “inciting hatred on national, religious and social grounds” and endangering Belarus’s national security — allegations Poland said were politically motivated.

In 2023, a Belarusian court sentenced him to eight years in a penal colony.

Mr Wieliński was the only journalist at last Tuesday’s border exchange.

He said he was stunned when he saw his friend for the first time in more than five years.

“He was just so skinny from the effect of food deprivation,” he said.

Mr Wieliński had been asked to attend by the Polish authorities. They wanted someone who knew Mr Poczobut personally, both to confirm his identity and to ensure Belarus did not substitute another person in his place.

His presence also meant Mr Poczobut would be met by a familiar face at a moment of extreme strain.

Once Mr Wieliński identified his old friend to Polish officers, the exchange of 10 prisoners — five from each side — went ahead as arranged.

A sign in Warsaw counting the days of Andrzej Poczobut’s captivity. On Tuesday, a sticker reading “free!” was added after his release

The Polish state attached such significance to the journalist’s return that Prime Minister Donald Tusk travelled to the border crossing to welcome him after the exchange was completed.

Mr Tusk soon posted a photograph on social media of himself shaking hands with the visibly thinner journalist, alongside the words: “Welcome home to Poland, my friend.”

To secure Mr Poczobut’s release, Poland handed over Alexander Butyagin, a Russian archaeologist who had been facing extradition to Ukraine.

Polish police arrested Mr Butyagin last December at Ukraine’s request after Kyiv alleged he had carried out an illegal excavation at a site in occupied Crimea.

According to Mr Wieliński, Mr Poczobut and the Russian archaeologist were exchanged simultaneously at the border, one travelling west, the other east.

Belarus also returned two other Polish citizens, among them a Carmelite priest whom Minsk had accused of being a Polish spy.

Few details have emerged about the four other Belarusian and Russian nationals transferred by Warsaw as part of the deal.

Russia’s FSB security service said in a statement this week that it had taken part in the operation alongside Belarus’s intelligence agency, the KGB.

That both agencies were involved suggests the individuals Poland handed over were considered valuable in Moscow and Minsk.

Belarus also released two Moldovan nationals, whom the FSB described as Moldovan intelligence officers.

US envoy John Coale and Radosław Sikorski at a press briefing in Warsaw on Tuesday

Tuesday’s exchange was the latest sign of Mr Lukashenko’s effort to mend relations with the West.

His regime has faced heavy sanctions from the European Union and the United States since 2020 over its violent crackdown on pro-democracy activists and for backing Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

In February of that year, Russian forces entered Ukraine from southern Belarus.

But in March this year, Belarus freed 250 political prisoners, many of whom later travelled to Lithuania and Poland. Mr Lukashenko pardoned them after discussions with US envoy John Coale.

In exchange, the United States has eased some sanctions on Belarus, including measures targeting state potash producers — potash is a key ingredient in fertiliser production — as well as restrictions on some Belarusian state banks.

Mr Coale and other US officials played a central role in the negotiations that produced Tuesday’s exchange, and the envoy later appeared in Warsaw with Polish foreign minister Radosław Sikorski to outline parts of the deal at a joint press conference.

Kamil Kłysiński, a Polish analyst specialising in Belarus and a colleague of Mr Poczobut, told RTÉ News that the timing of Tuesday’s swap was “fortunate”.

“Andrzej is not a spy and was never involved in any espionage,” said Mr Kłysiński, a senior fellow at the Centre of Eastern Studies in Warsaw.

But placing him in “this exchange of spies”, he said, was the “only possibility to get him out”.

Mr Lukashenko’s release of political prisoners has not been matched by political reform or any sign of greater press freedom in Belarus, and few expect that to change while he remains in power or while Vladimir Putin stays president of Russia.

There is little belief that Belarus’s ruler still has much room to manoeuvre in dealings with Moscow.

What Mr Lukashenko appears to want from these exchanges is further sanctions relief and a broader normalisation of ties with the United States to strengthen his position at home.

Last month, Mr Coale told The Financial Times that Washington was considering inviting Mr Lukashenko to the US for a meeting with President Donald Trump.

The US envoy said this week that he would return to Belarus later this month, raising the prospect that Washington could ease sanctions on the Minsk regime further.

Since his release on Tuesday, Mr Poczobut has been receiving medical care at a hospital in Warsaw run by Poland’s interior ministry.

Belarusian authorities have said the journalist would be welcome to return, and Mr Poczobut has said he may try. His wife, two children and parents still live there.

That would be an enormous gamble, and one Polish authorities may be unwilling to allow him to take.