Trump got her out of a KGB prison. Now she needs him to help free her husband.

Few people experience such a sudden reversal in their lives: from being held captive in a KGB prison by one of the world’s most brutal regimes to freedom in Europe.

Journalist Katsiaryna Andreeva is one of them.

Arrested in 2020 for filming a protest against Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko from a 14th-floor window, Andreeva was first sentenced to two years in prison on charges of “violating public order.” In July 2022, she was hit with a second charge, treason, and condemned to another eight years behind bars.

Then, U.S. President Donald Trump intervened, easing sanctions against Belarus in exchange for the release of political prisoners following booze-fueled negotiations between Lukashenko and an American envoy. Andreeva’s release in March came ahead of what Lukashenko has described as a potential “big deal” with the U.S., which is ostensibly designed to lure him away from Russia’s orbit.

Andreeva is grateful. In one of her first interviews after being released, she thanked the U.S. president “first of all.” And yet, she told POLITICO, this is no happy ending. More than two dozen journalists remain incarcerated in Belarus —  among them her husband, Ihar Ilyash, who is currently serving a four-year sentence.

Out of the 1,300 prisoners Trump promised would be released, so far only 500 have been let go, leaving hundreds behind. “These people are waiting to be freed,” said Andreeva, whose dramatic story has now inspired an HBO film.

Speaking from Warsaw, where she now lives in exile, she described the impossible trade-off between holding tyrannical leaders accountable and saving individual lives, including that of her husband. 

“By releasing me but keeping him in prison, they have created a situation where I feel they’ve kept a hostage,” she said. “I will only truly feel free once my husband is back by my side.”

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

To start, how are you? 

It’s complicated. It’s been difficult to adapt and get used to this new reality.

I feel as though I didn’t spend five years in prison, but 10 or 15. For me, these five years have felt longer than any year of my life before prison.

Initially you were sentenced to two years. Then, you were given an additional eight years for treason. Why do you think you were treated so harshly? 

I made it clear to the Belarusian authorities that first sentence didn’t scare me, that I would continue working as a journalist and that I wasn’t afraid.

It was part of a pressure campaign against those working on sensitive topics that the authorities considered dangerous. Like those who covered the events of 2020 without censoring themselves, especially those who conducted broadcasts or carried out investigations, who dared to speak about Russia’s actions against Ukraine.

Honest journalism scares the officials in Minsk. And, like in any totalitarian state, the first response to fear is violence. 

They used it, against me and against my husband. Maybe we’ll still talk about him later.

Let’s go there now. Ihar Ilyash, your husband, is still in prison.

My husband wasn’t just my romantic partner, he was also my professional role model. In 2020, we wrote a book together about Belarus’ participation in eastern Ukraine, about how Belarusians who’d participate in hostilities on Russia’s side returned home and were never held accountable for their actions. 

The book must have been a major source of irritation to the Belarusian authorities. But they couldn’t jail us then, it was a different time. 

I think later they took revenge on us for that too, and made us pay for it. 

How did Ihar react when you were arrested? 

My husband always supported me, though he urged me to be careful, especially when the protests began in 2020. He told me to take care of myself, not to go out if I didn’t need to work that day. That’s how he tried to protect me, and he worried about me a lot.

When I was eventually jailed, he said he wouldn’t leave Belarus while his wife was in a penal colony. He said he would stay close and be there for me until the day I was released. 

And he really was. He looked after my parents, and he would bring me warm pastries, croissants — still warm! — to prison.

Talk about real romance! 

Yes. 

In October 2024, on the eve of new presidential elections, he was arrested too.   

He was accused of aiding an extremist organization — essentially for giving interviews to media outlets that the Belarusian authorities have labeled as extremist. He was also charged with discrediting Belarus, allegedly for making false statements about the human rights situation in our country.

But in reality, he mostly spoke about me. He was trying to draw attention to my case and secure my release. My husband was fighting for me.

By releasing me but keeping him in prison, they have created a situation where I feel they’ve kept a hostage.

Have you managed to stay in touch with him?

There’s been no contact since the moment of his arrest, even though legally, as his wife, I have the right to at least call him.

I really hope he’ll be included in the next group of prisoners to be released, as well as Andrzej [Poczobut, a well-known Belarusian-Polish activist].

If you can, take me back to a typical day in prison.

You wake up at 6 a.m. You have five minutes to make your bed, no more, and it has to be done in a very specific way — the blanket must be folded perfectly like an envelope. If you do it wrong, they can punish you.  

There’s breakfast, and then you head off to work in a sewing factory. We made uniforms for law enforcement. You’re expected to start working from your first day, even if you’ve never sewn before. 

Everyone is mixed together: political prisoners and ordinary criminals, people convicted of murder or drug offenses. They put a lot of pressure on you, psychologically and emotionally. You’re constantly being rushed. You’re exhausted all the time, running back and forth in small groups. There’s maybe an hour of free time, but even that passes very quickly because there’s so many people and so little space.

A typical unit consists of 100 people. They’re divided into brigades of 20 or 30 people. You move around in groups of five, always in formation, like in the army. Walking freely around the grounds is forbidden.

Every day, you’re required to watch several hours of Belarusian state TV. If you leave the room while it’s on, that’s considered a violation, and you can be punished.

After that, there’s dinner. You get about 15 minutes so you have to eat very quickly.

Then, you return to your unit. There might be five or six sinks for 100 people, and after a full day of work everyone needs to wash. There’s always a line.

In general, life in the penal colony is built around constant pressure. You’re always being pushed, always rushed. Nothing is ever fast enough, it always has to be faster.

It barely leaves time for anything. You have to choose: Wash, eat properly or write a letter to your parents? You can’t do it all. 

There’s also heavy physical labor — carrying things, doing repair work on roads, hauling sacks of potatoes to the kitchen. In winter, when it snows, you have to shovel the snow into bags and carry it behind the prison buildings, out of sight. You can spend two hours doing this. It’s intense physical work.

And if you get sick, they will only do just enough to make sure you don’t die.

Were political prisoners like you treated differently in any way? 

There were a lot of provocations of different kinds. 

They once “found” a pill in my pocket, for example. It wasn’t mine, but they said it was, and because of that, I wasn’t allowed to see my family.

Some of the older political prisoners, women in their 70s, are deliberately given the top bunks. They are forced to climb up or somehow get down on their own. 

You were already a veteran journalist at the time of your arrest and knew the prison system well. Was there anything that still surprised you in experiencing the system from the inside? 

What surprised me more than anything was the devaluation of our norms, our sense of normality. How quickly it was eroded, how quickly people can get used to violence. That surprised me more than anything.

When I was sentenced to two years in 2021, everyone found it severe and shocking. But by 2025 to 2026, we already accepted a two-year sentence as almost nothing, not really a sentence at all.

And how quickly people can be made to believe that evil is good, that black is white. This metamorphosis in the public consciousness of Belarusians surprised me, and it still does.

I remember interviewing Russian political prisoners who were released in a prison swap in 2024. They told me that, after years of confinement, they had to get used to a new world. 

Yes! I feel like I’ve been released into a terrible world. The war in Ukraine is probably the hardest to come to terms with. I remember those days in February 2022, when the war began, it was terrifying. And at the same time, I felt shame that my country, my homeland, acted this way toward its neighbors, against all agreements, against history, even against common sense.

It’s very hard to shake a sense of guilt that my country has become a staging ground for Russian troops entering Ukraine. 

Are you at all surprised that Lukashenko has managed to cling to power since the mass 2020 protests? 

The main factor that allowed him to retain power in 2020 was his reliance on the security apparatus. For years and even decades, these people have been given privileges and coddled by the state.

Most importantly, they’ve never been given the feeling that they’d one day have to bear responsibility for their actions or be held accountable. 

He’s also made use of the inertia in Belarusian society, and he very skillfully manipulates the ongoing war next door. Much of Belarusian propaganda today is built on the idea that, thanks to the president, the country has managed to preserve peaceful skies overhead.

But I do think these are trying times for Alexander Lukashenko. He might consider the lifting of sanctions a major success, but Moscow still keeps him on a tight leash. 

It’s interesting that you mention Moscow as applying pressure, rather than Washington. Is there a risk that Trump’s friendly approach toward Lukashenko sends exactly the kind of message of impunity you criticized before?

The way I see it, it’s a business relationship. It’s no coincidence that Trump always talks about “the art of the deal,” he’s used to operating in those terms.

I probably don’t have enough information to fully and clearly understand the rationale on the American side. But I do understand what motivates the Belarusians.

Of course, Minsk is interested in having these sanctions lifted. As a former political prisoner, I can say on my end the fact that without sanctions, there wouldn’t have been anything to bargain with for our release in the first place. 

But I wouldn’t trust Lukashenko if I were the Americans. Out of the 1,300 prisoners Trump said would be released, so far Lukashenko has let go only 500. It’s a scam. 

But if it leads to people being released and families being reunited, then personally I can only embrace it. 

That’s why I thanked Trump and his team, from a humanitarian point of view. But I am certainly not in favor of forgiving the Belarusian regime for its actions. I don’t believe everything should simply be forgotten, forgiven and the page turned. Of course not.

What do you think about the argument that, while releasing some political prisoners, Lukashenko continues to jail others, essentially collecting more bargaining chips? 

It’s crucial to stop this machine. Otherwise, it’ll keep grinding up more and more victims.

It’s not enough to release political prisoners; there must also be an end to new politically motivated detentions, an end to the cases currently being pursued and an end to the repressive practices themselves. 

No one should be jailed for a like or a repost, for independent journalism or for sending a political prisoner a parcel.  

Take me back to the day of your release.

Most of those who were released in March remained in Belarus under conditions that can be compared to house arrest. They’re basically deprived of most of their civil rights; they’re forbidden from attending public events, opening a bank account or even buying a SIM card.

But they singled out f15 of us who were the most dangerous to them, the most well-known figures, to expel. 

It actually started back in February, more than a month before my release, when they transferred me from the penal colony to a KGB detention center with a hat pulled down over my nose and in handcuffs.

I was called in and questioned about my views on the events of 2020, whether I planned to return to journalism, whether I had reconsidered my views. There were four or five such interrogations, I don’t remember exactly. I got the impression that they were stalling for time.

Then, on March 2, I was moved to a solitary cell. There, I was held incommunicado. Correspondence was forbidden, I had no way of getting any news. I just sat in that small concrete cell, waiting for something. I didn’t even have a clock — after a while, I lost track of the time and date. 

This went on until the day of my release. Early in the morning, they told me to take a shower, outside of the usual weekly schedule. I thought it was strange.

That’s when I began to suspect they might be releasing me. 

After that, everything happened very quickly. They brought us to a collection point, where I saw Anastasia Loika and Maria Rabkova — the other two women who were being taken out with me. 

Later I saw the men, and we were put into two unmarked minibuses and driven somewhere at very high speed. At the Lithuanian border, a special envoy entered the vehicle and said that everything was over — that on behalf of President Trump we were free. 

Who was it? 

It was John Coale, the U.S. special envoy to Belarus. We shook hands, and then we hugged.

We were welcomed very warmly. U.S. Embassy staff gave us fruit, candy and phones so we could call our families. Everyone had tears of happiness in their eyes. There was also a doctor there who examined us. 

You’re living in freedom in Poland. But your parents are still in Belarus. So is your jailed husband. To what extent are you able to actually feel free? 

Prison lingers for a long time. Even when you are physically free and in a free country, you can’t shake it off for quite a while. That oppressive feeling of prison, of unfreedom — it fades slowly. With each day, it loosens its grip a little more. But I will only truly feel free once my husband is back by my side.

The day of his release will be my real day of freedom.