Secretary of State Rubio hails release of US prisoner in Belarus as controversy hangs over nation’s election

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday announced the release of a U.S. citizen who had been imprisoned in Belarus as controversy looms over the Eastern European nation’s ongoing election. 

Crediting President Donald Trump’s leadership, Rubio said in a post on X that “Belarus just unilaterally released an innocent American, ANASTASSIA Nuhfer, who was taken under JOE BIDEN!” 

Rubio added that Christopher Smith, State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary for Eastern Europe and Policy and Regional Affairs, “from our team did a great job on this.”  

“PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH,” Rubio, who served 14 years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before he was sworn in as Trump’s new Secretary of State last week, wrote. 

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No further information was immediately released about Nuhfer or her release, as some social media users marveled about not knowing an American had been jailed in Belarus during former President Joe Biden’s administration. 

Meanwhile, Belarus is holding its national election on Sunday. President Alexander Lukashenko, a loyalist of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, only faces token opposition and is expected to get another term on top of his three decades in power. 

Lukashenko’s more consequential opponents, many of whom are imprisoned or exiled abroad by his unrelenting crackdown on dissent and free speech, are calling the election a sham – much like the last one in 2020 that triggered months of protests that were unprecedented in the history of the country of 9 million people.

The crackdown saw more than 65,000 arrests, with thousands beaten, bringing condemnation and sanctions from the West, according to the Associated Press. 

The country holds nearly 1,300 political prisoners, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski, founder of the Viasna Human Rights Center.

Since July, Lukashenko has pardoned more than 250 people. At the same time, authorities have sought to uproot dissent by arresting hundreds more in raids targeting relatives and friends of political prisoners.

Authorities detained 188 people last month alone, Viasna said. Activists and those who donated money to opposition groups have been summoned by police and forced to sign papers saying they were warned against participating in unsanctioned demonstrations, rights advocates said, according to the AP.

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Opposition leader-in-exile Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who fled Belarus under government pressure after challenging the president in 2020, told the AP that Sunday’s election was “a senseless farce, a Lukashenko ritual.”

Voters should cross off everyone on the ballot, she said, and world leaders shouldn’t recognize the result from a country “where all independent media and opposition parties have been destroyed and prisons are filled by political prisoners.”

“The repressions have become even more brutal as this vote without choice has approached, but Lukashenko acts as though hundreds of thousands of people are still standing outside his palace,” she said.

The European Parliament urged the European Union to reject the election outcome. EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas called the vote “a blatant affront to democracy.”

Shortly after voting in Minsk on Sunday, Lukashenko told journalists that he did not seek recognition or approval from the EU.

“The main thing for me is that Belarusians recognize these elections and that they end peacefully, as they began,” he said.

Media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders filed a complaint against Lukashenko with the International Criminal Court over his crackdown on free speech that saw 397 journalists arrested since 2020. It said that 43 are in prison.

Two years after the demise of the Soviet Union, Lukashenko took office in 1994 and has earned the nickname of “Europe’s Last Dictator.” His iron-fisted rule had been cemented through subsidies and political support from Russia, a close ally. 

He let Moscow use his territory to invade Ukraine in 2022, and even hosts some of Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons, but he still campaigned with the slogan “Peace and security,” arguing he has saved Belarus from being drawn into war.

“It’s better to have a dictatorship like in Belarus than a democracy like Ukraine,” Lukashenko said. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.