Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
A diplomatic playbook from Minsk was quietly on the table in Washington this week.
US President Donald Trump has reportedly backed a plan from White House envoy John Coale to gradually ease US sanctions on Russia in exchange for the release of political prisoners.
The approach mirrored a formula that produced hundreds of releases in Belarus.
On Wednesday, September 30, the Kremlin shut it down.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the proposal “was not discussed, and could not have been discussed, because we categorically deny the existence of any political prisoners, and we believe that such a framing of the issue is absolutely inappropriate,” he told reporters.
That blanket denial clashes with years of documentation by Russian rights groups. Memorial, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning group that now operates from exile, lists 1,371 people jailed on political grounds, with a broader database of more than 5,700 individuals persecuted for apparently political reasons.
The group warns the list is “admittedly incomplete.”
The Belarus formula, applied to Moscow
Coale is the envoy who brokered the release of hundreds of political prisoners in Belarus. In exchange, Washington eased sanctions on Minsk and opened talks on purchasing Belarusian potash fertilizer, The Atlantic reported.
He now plans to coordinate the Russia track with Steve Witkoff, Trump’s main interlocutor with Moscow.
Peskov did leave one door open. He said Russian and American security services “continue to maintain regular contacts” on prisoner exchanges, pointing to a channel that has produced earlier swaps.
He was unambiguous, however, that any package tying releases to sanctions relief under a political-prisoner label was off the table.
No public response from the White House
Neither Coale nor Witkoff has publicly answered Peskov, and the White House has issued no new statement since the Kremlin rejection.
Memorial’s lists remain publicly accessible through the group’s websites in Russian and English, where names, cases, and letters-to-prisoners information are updated on an ongoing basis.
