Prisoners for potash: Alyaksandr Lukashenka and the GDR precedent

Belaruskali potash plant in Salihorsk, Belarus. Photo: Shutterstock

On December 15th 2025, coming directly from the orders of the White House, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued General License 13 (GL13). This move authorized the sale of Belaruskali Potash Fertilizer. Potash was previously sanctioned in 2021 during the Biden administration, citing human rights abuses and political repression within Belarus under the harsh yoke of President Alyaksandr Lukashenka. In exchange for the issuance of this licence, Lukashenka released a total of 123 prisoners, most notably releasing the Nobel Laureate Ales Bialiatski and prominent opposition leader Maria Kalesnikava. What first appeared as an act of goodwill is, conversely, a regurgitation of the German Democratic Republic’s (GDR) own tactics from the 1960s regarding the exchange of this desirable potash fertilizer. As I previously covered in my own article at Europinion, the scepticism surrounding the first initial prisoner swap in June 2025 pursued by Special Envoy John Coale confirmed my speculation that this deal was nefarious to the last. While the release of long-detained figures like Siarhei Tsikhanouski generated headlines of a diplomatic “thaw”, the reality of these releases reveals a steep and systemic price tag. For Lukashenka, the right price for this group of prisoners is an open potash market that has been crushed under the weight of international sanctions.

But the human currency trade is not a new story in the cultural memory of the former USSR. In fact, one must turn to the works of the historian Stefan Wolle to bring the full picture into view. Covered in his historiography of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), The Ideal World of Dictatorship: Daily Life and Party Rule in the GDR 1971–1989, the disturbing similarities between John Coale and the former Stasi lawyer, Wolfgang Vogel, are brought to the surface in covering the human toll of Wolle’s “silent social contract”. While it comes at little risk for Belarus and Lukashenka, this prisoner exchange sets a disturbing precedent that highlights the danger of dealing with authoritarians as confirmed by the Ośrodek Studiów Wschodnich (OSW, Centre for Eastern Studies)

From Wolfgang Vogel to John Coale

On Christmas 1962, three wagons of potash were brought to the Herleshausen border to meet their equivalent: 20 adults and 20 children awaiting freedom in West Germany. Wolfgang Vogel would eventually be renowned for his transfers across the Glienicke Bridge, carrying infamous spies like Rudolph Abel and Gary Powers. Still, these opening acts were simply the building blocks to maintain Stasi contracts like the potash deal. The covert prisoner exchange between West Germany and the GDR is well documented in the Stasi files and valued at over three billion deutschmarks in the period between 1964 to 1989. What Wolle coined as “politischer Giftmüll” (political toxic waste) was the reality of human beings who were processed into bargaining chips for the GDR government, maintaining the illusion of a functioning government. While collecting funds the GDR desperately needed during times of economic strain, the only voices that challenged party rule were sent over the wall into West Germany. This recycling of prisoners meant a further tightened grip by extrajudicial groups like the Stasi and the German Communist Party. It also would mean the collection of wealth that would not be distributed immediately to the people of the GDR, but rather the groups that organized the swaps.

It remains a contentious topic in the Cold War: who initiated the exchange of prisoners between East and West? According to Wolle, the trade for potash fertilizer began with a West German obligation to aid citizens in escaping the GDR. Reymar von Wedel, assistant to the President of the Protestant Church in Berlin, followed Church directives, “to find ways to help Church employees and members in the East”, which would result in the meeting of Wedel and Vogel. What may have started as a benign notion of helping fellow Germans would trickle into the black-market trade of people for currency, much like the Lukashenka deals.

There was a sigh of relief among European leaders, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya most of all, when Siarhei Tsikhanouski was released on the first Coale mission to Minsk. What started with the release of 14 prisoners would eventually evolve into the group of 123 this December, solidifying an attempted escape from Belarusian sanctions that were directed at Lukashenka’s crackdown on opposition during the last presidential election. The political off-ramp that this deal opens for Belarus to move away from the lifeline of the Kremlin and bypass wary European security leaders, who long to see Lukashenka gone, will further strain European and American security ties in the coming year.

The “Eastern Shield” and the Baltics will not budge

The OSW reports that Lukashenka has sent a crystal-clear message: he will not release the Polish-Belarusian journalist Andrzej Poczobut, as he is only willing to do business with Washington and Moscow. Acting in response to Russian aggression, Poland and the Baltics have ensured that the potash is not moved an inch into EU soil. Former Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė said in response to the licence, “I think we will be unyielding here.” The issuance of GL13 may authorize the sale of potash, but it cannot solve the geographical reality of the Baltic “Iron Curtain”. For the Trump-Lukashenka deal to be economically viable, the fertilizer must reach global markets – a feat currently blocked by the unyielding stance of Vilnius and Warsaw. Prime Minister Inga Ruginienė’s refusal to allow Belarusian potash back into the port of Klaipėda creates a logistical “bottleneck” that the White House seems to have overlooked. The prime minister claimed that a “deal” to open the Suwałki Gap has not reached her desk. However, by denying any mention of requests to Vilnius it is clear Ruginienė is reinforcing the “Eastern Shield”.  The logistical hindrance of shipping the potash back through Russia has prompted Belarus to ask the United States to assist in transporting the fertilizer through Europe. The sanctioned administration in Minsk will not be able to withstand the costs of logistics for much longer unless further agreements can be made. The Trump administration has severely weakened its NATO credibility in circumventing European security and economic frameworks that have consistently worked against the ruthless crackdown on human rights in Belarus.

As we can understand from the standpoint of Stefan Wolle, the process of dealing with Lukashenka not only legitimizes his authoritarian rule, but it also neglects to condemn the egregious arrests of innocent civilians and political elements in Belarus. With brilliant opposition figures like Ales Bialatski and Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who have faced the brutality of exile from the country first-hand, European leaders must heed the real experiences of Belarusians in exile. By funding Lukashenka’s potash lifeline, Trump has only incentivized the further imprisonment of opposition within the country. A system that uses citizens as an investment for the future is one that does not reflect the human rights that the European Union stands for.

A small coin in a big fountain

The cruelty of this transactional diplomacy is best summarized by Stanisław Poczobut, father of the still-imprisoned journalist Andrzej Poczobut. In a moving appeal to the Polish public, Stanisław described his son as a “small coin” in Lukashenka’s pocket—a piece of currency being saved to pay for a much larger political concession from Warsaw. For the families in Grodno and Warsaw, the potash bargain of 2025 is not a diplomatic breakthrough – it is a ledger in which their loved ones remain the unpaid debt. This is not cruel. Instead, it is effectively a weaponized human trafficking funnel that will continue to hurt the people of Belarus until European security leaders can form harsher ranks in front of Lukashenka, Putin and Trump. In a final show of vindictive antipathy for his prisoners, Lukashenka is leaving them in the same stateless limbo that Vogel and the GDR left their prisoners over the border. Ensuring permanent exile by destroying the recent prisoners’ passports upon departure, Lukashenka is further complicating the refugee process by eliminating their former statehood.

In an attempt to solve this crisis, Pavel Latushka of the National Anti-Crisis Management Office and Tomasz Cytrynowicz, the head of the Polish Office for Foreigners, have come together to address specific issues faced by released prisoners. One particular issue is the dilemma of opening bank accounts and obtaining travel documents following their release from the grip of Lukashenka’s prison system. As many Europeans will remember during the refugee crisis, Belarus and Russia have gone back to engaging in the same antics of flooding neighbouring states with weaponized immigration to further undermine coherent European security. It is incredibly important that deals such as these never pass the desks of European security leaders, as potash has been used before to trade for human beings. The result of all this is the toxic waste disposal that Lukashenka has been encouraged to use by the Trump administration. We will see the same cyclical routine of “thaw” that Lukashenka and Putin would like the world to believe, as well as the continued neglect of human rights abuses that will only increase as a result.

Conclusion

If the West treats the Suwałki Gap as a mere logistics valve for “prisoners for potash”, it risks more than just regional friction – it risks validating a manual for authoritarian survival that was perfected in the Cold War. As the GDR precedent teaches us, trading human currency for commodity access does not soften a dictatorship, as it only finances its next crackdown. Until the US recognizes the “Eastern Shield” as a moral boundary rather than a trade bottleneck, it will remain trapped in the same “silent social contract” that once fuelled the Stasi’s coffers. The ghosts of Wolfgang Vogel are not just haunting the archives. Indeed, they are currently drafting the next transaction on the Belarusian border

Zach Rogers is a researcher and analyst specializing in the applied history and geopolitics of Eastern Europe and the Balkans. He is a contributing writer for Europinion, a London-based independent journal of international affairs, and holds an MA in European and Mediterranean Studies from New York University.

Alyaksandr Lukashenka, belarus, GDR, potash, prisoner exchange