Closing summary
… and on that note, it’s a wrap for today!
The Polish-Belarusian journalist Andrzej Poczobut, the 2025 Sakharov prize winner, has been freed after five years in a Belarusian penal colony as part of a US-brokered multi-country swap deal (13:19).
A prominent Polish community activist in Belarus and a journalist for Poland’s newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, Poczobut was sentenced to eight years in a penal colony after a process widely condemned as a politically motivated attempt to silence the regime’s critics.
The release is part a US-brokered prisoner exchange involving several other countries: Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia and Ukraine.
The release comes as part of a broader attempt to bring Belarus closer to the west, with talks led by Donald Trump’s special envoy to Belarus, John Coale.
Two Moldovan citizens were also released as part of the swap (15:11).
In other news,
Andorra’s co-prince and France’s president Emmanuel Macron has backed proposed changes to the country’s draconian abortion laws in a speech during his two-day visit to the country, in which he also called for a swift implementation of an association agreement with the EU (10:42, 11:32, 13:01, 16:04).
Romania’s Social Democrats and far right on Tuesday said they filed a no-confidence motion against liberal prime minister Ilie Bolojan after his pro-EU ruling coalition broke apart, triggering a new political crisis in a turmoil-weary country (16:21).
Finland’s president Alexander Stubb downplayed recent warnings of a possible Russian attack on European Nato allies in the coming months, but urged Europe to be “prepared for the worst so you can avoid it,” as he confirmed some delays in US arms deliveries to the continent as a result of the Iran war (11:54, 11:58).
An 89-year-old man was arrested in Greece in connection with a reported shooting in central Athens which left five people injured (11:20, 16:17).
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Poland's Tusk confirms identities of two other people released to Poland in prisoner swap
Back to Andrzej Poczobut’s release from a Belarusian penal colony, Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk is now speaking about the process behind it.
He says today’s attempt to get him swapped for other prisoners was just the latest of many, with the Belarusian side previously once changing its mind less than 24 hours before an agreed date.
He also confirms that two other people were released to Poland: Grzegorz Gaweł, a Polish Catholic priest, and a Belarusian who helped Polish security services and whose name will not be revealed.
