TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — The chief of a top trans-Atlantic security grouping visited Belarus on Tuesday for the first time in seven years as the country’s authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko has sought to normalize ties with the West.

Feridun Sinirlioglu, the secretary-general of the Vienna-based Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, visited Belarus to attend an international security conference and met with Lukashenko.

Sinirlioglu’s visit to Belarus marks the first such trip by the OSCE’s chief since 2019. Belarus, a close ally of Russia, has faced Western isolation and sanctions for years.

Speaking at the start of his meeting with Lukashenko, Sinirlioglu noted Belarus’ role in helping organize exchanges of prisoners of war between Russia and Ukraine.

The Belarusian leader said that he “highly appreciates” Sinirlioglu’s visit, but he also criticized the OSCE for what he described as its purported pro-Western stance and unfair criticism of elections in Belarus and Russia.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov attended the conference along with diplomats from ex-Soviet nations, China and other countries.

Lukashenko has governed the nation of 9.5 million with an iron fist for more than three decades, and Belarus has been sanctioned repeatedly by Western countries — both for its crackdown on human rights and for allowing Moscow to use its territory in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.

Belarusian opposition leader-in-exile Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said that “for Lukashenko, a meeting with the OSCE’s secretary-general is already a significant and entirely undeserved political reward.”

“High-level visits and meetings with Lukashenko — if they don’t lead to concrete changes — only strengthen his regime and foster a sense of impunity,” Tsikhanouskaya told The Associated Press.

“Engagement must yield real results — the release of political prisoners, an end to repression, and a withdrawal of support for the Russian aggression — rather than serving as a tool to grant the regime international legitimacy,” she said.

Lukashenko’s rule was challenged after a 2020 presidential election that kept him in power, when tens of thousands of people poured into the streets to protest a vote widely seen as rigged. In an ensuing crackdown, tens of thousands of people were detained, with many beaten by police. Prominent opposition figures either fled the country or were imprisoned.

Since U.S. President Donald Trump returned to the White House for his second term, Lukashenko has released hundreds of political prisoners in a series of U.S.-mediated deals that also lifted some U.S. sanctions, part of his efforts to overcome isolation and normalize ties with the West.

As part of a deal in March that Washington helped broker, Lukashenko ordered the release of 250 political prisoners, while the U.S. agreed to lift sanctions on two Belarusian state banks and the country’s Finance Ministry, and to remove the top Belarusian potash producers from a sanctions list. And in September, Belarusian authorities released 25 prisoners in exchange for the lifting of U.S. sanctions against two Belarusian companies.

The Belarusian opposition has welcomed the prisoners’ release, but noted that many others remain in custody. Belarus still has 887 political prisoners, according to the Viasna human rights center.

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