US President Donald Trump has decided to nominate John Cole for the position of special envoy to Belarus.
“I am pleased to announce that John Cole, known as one of our country’s truly outstanding lawyers, among whose victories was the first major winning tobacco case, has been nominated to serve as the US special envoy to Belarus. He has already successfully negotiated the release of 100 hostages and intends to release 50 more,” Trump wrote on his social media account Truthsocial.
The administration of US President Donald Trump has intensified contacts with the official Minsk 2025.
Following the visits of US representatives to Minsk on 21 June, 14 political prisoners, including Sergei Tikhanovsky, were released and taken out of Belarus. On 11 September, after another visit of John Cole to Minsk, it became known that another 52 prisoners were released and taken to Lithuania. Among them was a well-known politician Mikalai Statkevich, who refused to leave Belarus.
This year, in August, Donald Trump called Aliaksandr Lukashenka and twice after that mentioned the release of more than a thousand Belarusian political prisoners.