In February 2020, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made a historic visit to Belarus on a mission to normalize ties with the authoritarian country as a means of blunting Russia and China’s influence in Eastern Europe.
The visit, the first by the United States’ top diplomat in more than 25 years, signaled a significant thaw in relations over a decade after Aleksandr Lukashenko kicked out the U.S. ambassador in 2008 after Washington slapped further sanctions on Minsk over human rights abuses. “I think we can, if everything proceeds apace, have an ambassador here before too terribly long. I think it’d be a great thing for us,” Pompeo said.
