‘Easing sanctions is premature’: Freed Belarusian journalist and UN report reveal ongoing repression

What the June 2026 UN report found

UN Special Rapporteur Nils Muižnieks presented his latest report on the same day Andreyeva spoke. Covering April 1, 2025, to March 31, 2026, the report concluded that Belarus continues to “systematically and grossly violate its international human rights obligations” . Key findings include:

• “Belarus continues to systematically suppress dissent” with no sign of improvement .
• More than 950 political prisoners remained detained at the time of the report’s presentation .
• The regime has maintained old repressive tactics while devising new ones, including persecuting those who assisted Ukraine .
• A separate UN Group of Independent Experts report from March 2026 found that in 2025 alone, at least 1,254 people were convicted on politically motivated charges, and that human rights violations remain “grave, systematic and widespread,” with some amounting to crimes against humanity .
• Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2026 noted that politically motivated repression continued five years after the 2020 protests .

The EU’s consistent position

The European Union has repeatedly reinforced the same message through formal statements and resolutions:

• March 2025 (Council of Europe): The EU stated it remains “deeply concerned about the continuing human rights violations in Belarus, including arbitrary arrests, torture and ill-treatment, denial of the rights to due process and to a fair trial,” noting that over 1,250 political prisoners were unjustly detained at that time .
• June 2025 (UN Human Rights Council): The EU condemned “the continued politically motivated repression and a crackdown on freedom of expression, assembly and association, including through the misuse of counter-terrorism and anti-extremism legislation” .
• October 2025 (European Parliament resolution): MEPs firmly condemned repression in Belarus, demanded the immediate release of all political prisoners, and called for sustained EU engagement and support for democratic forces .
• The EU does not recognize the January 2025 presidential election as legitimate and has described the Lukashenko regime’s repression as expanding beyond Belarus’s borders, targeting Belarusians abroad with surveillance, threats, and prosecutions .

The broader picture: what the numbers show

Multiple independent sources paint a consistent picture of a regime that has not changed its behavior. The Viasna Human Rights Centre documented 1,208 political prisoners in custody as of April 2025 . The UN Group of Independent Experts reported that in 2025 at least 1,254 people were convicted on politically motivated charges . Human Rights Watch noted that by December 2025, at least 1,110 people remained behind bars on politically motivated grounds . Amnesty International’s 2025 report concluded that the authorities “continued to abuse the justice system to silence and punish dissent and opposition” .

Bottom line

Andreyeva’s warning — that sanctions relief without ending the underlying system of repression is a flawed bargain — is strongly corroborated by both the UN and the EU. The evidence shows that arrests, politically motivated convictions, torture, and systematic human rights violations continue unabated under Alexander Lukashenko. The question remains whether the prisoner-for-sanctions model can ever achieve durable change, or whether it simply offers the regime a way to reset its international position while maintaining domestic control.