The U.S. Offered Putin’s Closest Ally Sanctions Relief—and a Weight-Loss Drug

It was a moment of intimacy in what was becoming one of the stranger diplomatic initiatives since Trump’s return to power. Lukashenko wanted Washington to ease the raft of sanctions on some of his country’s most profitable companies—and get his presidential jet fixed.

In return, the dictator was open to trading the one resource he had plenty of: political prisoners. If Coale succeeded, it could be a test run for the Trump administration’s central prize of bringing Putin and Russia’s $2 trillion economy out of isolation.

And maybe, U.S. officials thought, there could be a way to help a heavyset 71-year-old head of state interested in shedding some pounds. They resolved to look into arranging a supply of Zepbound for Lukashenko’s personal use.

“I don’t care who we talk to,” said Coale, in an interview at his midcentury mansion overlooking Washington’s Rock Creek Park. His effort to establish a personal relationship with Lukashenko, he added, is intended to mirror Trump’s approach to world leaders that the West finds odious. “This really is Trumpesque,” he said. “The hell with who you’re talking to, if this person can deliver what you want, that’s all that counts.”

Last month Lukashenko, who has referred to himself as “the last and only dictator in Europe,” released 123 prisoners, including Nobel laureate Ales Bialiatski and opposition figure Maria Kalesnikava. Since Trump took office, Belarus has freed more than 250 detainees from over 10 countries, among them at least five with American citizenship, in one of the biggest political prisoner releases since the collapse of Communism.

In return, the U.S. is throwing an economic lifeline to his regime, among the world’s most repressive. Washington lifted sanctions on potash, a key ingredient for fertilizer and an important source of hard currency for Belarus, the third-largest producer after Canada and Russia. The Trump administration also arranged for Boeing to supply software and spare parts to the state airline, Belavia. As an added bonus, the presidential jet is getting some overdue repairs.

The Trump administration is now hoping it can make Belarus an example of rewards that could also be available to Putin, his friend and benefactor of a quarter-century—if Russia helps the U.S. peacefully conclude the war in Ukraine.

“Eventually Putin is going to be in a situation where he has to make a very difficult decision,” said a U.S. official. “Having the person that he knows the best and trusts the most… to have him saying positive things about the deal is important.”

The unreported Lukashenko back channel—described by more than a dozen current and former U.S. and European officials, including several helming negotiations—has become intricately woven into talks led by Trump’s golfing partner Steve Witkoff to end Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II.

Once an international pariah, Lukashenko has advised the U.S. on how to approach Putin, and helped encourage the U.S.-Russia summit in Alaska last summer.

He offers pointers on how the U.S. should deal with Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan strongman currently hemmed in by American warships. Last week he told Coale’s wife, Newsmax anchor Greta Van Susteren, that Maduro is welcome to move to Belarus’ capital, Minsk. He also holds court on U.S. adversaries generally, including his other ally Xi Jinping, who has dined with one of Lukashenko’s sons during his studies in Beijing.

“President Trump has done more to solve global conflicts, bring Americans home, and release unjustly detained prisoners, than any President in history—and it’s not even close,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt in a statement to the Journal.

The engagements have stirred conflicted reactions among European allies and Belarusian dissidents, who are happy to see prisoners come home, yet wary of having one of the world’s great hostage-takers lavished with attention and economic rewards.

“It’s rather mixed feelings. I have joy, joy for Belarusian people,” said dissident leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the internationally recognized winner of the 2020 elections, whose own husband numbered among those released this year. “But of course for Lukashenko, freeing people has a price, and he is willing to sell people as long as it is possible. It could look like a revolving door.”

It was the first Trump administration that helped lead a global campaign to shun Lukashenko, who jailed more than 30,000 protesters after he falsely claimed victory in 2020. Dissidents were tortured and held incommunicado while authorities used rape and sexual violence to suppress dissent, a United Nations Human Rights Council report said. The next year, his air-traffic control agents forced a Ryanair plane flying over Belarus to land in Minsk—claiming it was transporting a bomb—allowing police to grab a Belarusian opposition journalist on board.

Border guards subsequently waved thousands of migrants into neighboring Poland and Lithuania, distracting European policymakers from Putin’s massive buildup of troops, including tens of thousands on the Belarus border with Ukraine.

Last week Lukashenko announced that Russia’s new Oreshnik nuclear missile was deployed in Belarusian territory and is now “on combat alert.” He has described North Korea as a model for Belarus, complimenting its hair-trigger nuclear posture and mimicking its fiery rhetoric.

‘Where the hell’ is Belarus?

John Coale was attending an event at the British Embassy in Washington when the State Department called, with a request: Could he go to Belarus and retrieve a political prisoner with an American passport? Coale had been acquainted with Trump for many years, but earned his trust helping him sue social-media platforms that banned him after the Jan. six riots. On a wall in his Palm Beach home, he hung a framed check for $22 million from the Meta settlement, funds destined for the Trump presidential library.

He wasn’t a traditional choice to lead a diplomatic mission to Belarus. “My first thought is, where the hell is that?” said Coale.

Away from public view, Lukashenko had been laying the groundwork to bring his country closer to America, using prisoners. Immediately after Trump’s second inauguration, his foreign ministry had dialed the State Department, through a channel normally used for military deconfliction, to say the country hoped for a thaw. The employee on the other end wanted to see Belarus take the first step.

As it happened, Russia and Belarus were each poised to release prisoners to forge relationships with officials around Trump whom Moscow and Minsk felt were amenable to their perspective. On Feb. 11, Putin freed an American high school history teacher, jailed for marijuana possession, during a meeting with Witkoff.

The next day Belarus released an American who the State Department had designated as unjustly detained. After more talks with U.S. diplomats, they freed another three prisoners—including a U.S. citizen and journalist for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Now, the State Department was phoning Coale to say Belarus had another inmate ready to walk free: Youras Ziankovich, a dual U.S.-Belarusian citizen arrested in Moscow then extradited to Belarus and sentenced to 11 years for plotting a coup, charges he and the U.S. government said were wrongful. Coale, then the deputy special envoy to Ukraine, was asked to go collect him.

Within 48 hours the lawyer was in Minsk sitting opposite Lukashenko in a presidential palace with a reception hall so vast he wondered if Tom Brady could throw a football from one end to the other. The dictator was in a jovial mood and the two spoke for four hours, dining on black bread, potato pancakes and an array of meats.

As Coale started peppering his English with expletives, Lukashenko reciprocated, speaking an increasingly coarse Russian. Coale likened foreign relations to an American high school cafeteria and told Lukashenko he sat at the “loser table” of global affairs with Venezuela, Iran and North Korea, but could move to the “cool guy table,” with U.S. help. The dictator was offering so many toasts of his own President-branded vodka that Coale, who knew how to hold his liquor, had to wait for him to look away and surreptitiously discard the glasses.

Ziankovich wasn’t mentioned by name. But after the meeting, the KGB escorted Coale to a forest near the border to collect him.

“We talked and we laughed, and he’s free, and everybody’s happy,” Coale recalled.

Within weeks, Coale was sitting in Washington’s Fairmont Hotel with Belarus’ ambassador to the United Nations, Valentin Rybakov, who explained that Lukashenko wanted sanctions lifted on the state airline’s aging fleet of Boeing airplanes.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Coale said.

Friendly fire

Lukashenko had already tried to get the Biden administration to release spare Boeing parts in exchange for 30 prisoners, but the idea fizzled out when he insisted Europe also lift sanctions.

Now, Coale was working with a growing team of aides from agencies across the Trump administration, drafting ideas for sanctions relief and possible trades they hoped could benefit the U.S. economy.

In June, Lukashenko requested Coale return to Minsk. In exchange for eased sanctions on the state airline, he pledged to release 14 more prisoners, a batch that included Sergei Tikhanovsky, a leading dissident figure along with the husband of Tsikhanouskaya, the exiled opposition leader.

As the guest of honor, seated opposite Lukashenko, Coale was pushing glasses of vodka aside, or sipping them. A U.S. official whispered a tip: Eat some bread.

Lukashenko noticed his guest had lost weight since they’d last seen each other in April. Coale joked that he was on “the fat drug,” Zepbound. It wasn’t the first time the drug came up; Lukashenko had been curious about weight-loss medications during the April visit, and a close aide had been urging Lukashenko to do something about his girth, a person familiar with the matter said.

Weeks later, he was telling Trump about his adventures over a roasted chicken dinner in the White House. Trump quizzed Coale about the prisoner exchanges and the opportunities for Russia diplomacy. The president was due to meet Putin in Alaska in a few days, and seemed surprised one of his special envoys was developing such a rapport with the leader of Belarus.

“Get his phone number. I’m going to call this guy,” Coale recalls the president telling him. A scheduled talk fell through when the White House at the last minute realized it hadn’t arranged a translator.

Less than 48 hours later, Coale was listening from the Situation Room as Trump dialed Lukashenko from aboard Air Force One, heading to the Alaska Summit. The leaders chatted for 10 minutes, exchanging pleasantries and praising each other’s strength. Trump suggested an in-person meeting and said Belarus should consider another, bigger, prisoner release.

The big haul

The world watched as Trump returned from the Alaska summit without a cease-fire, but behind closed doors, the administration’s Belarus diplomacy was gathering pace.

The State Department sent midlevel aides to Belarus. European allies were turning to the U.S. for information on their eastern neighbor, along with pleas for the prisoners they hoped to free. A half-decade of isolation was ending for Lukashenko.

Coale was now regularly talking to Rybakov, Belarus’s U.N. ambassador, to discuss the sanctions relief and how the plane parts would be arranged. U.S. officials were working on legal language to mitigate the risk Boeing components could be spirited from Belarus into Russia.

In early September, Coale returned to Minsk to ink the deal. This time, 52 prisoners were released across the border with Ukraine. The White House eased sanctions on the national airline, Belavia—which has just half a dozen Boeings. Publicly, Lukashenko called it a “very important” move. Privately, he dangled a carrot: Belarus, he suggested, could buy more Boeing aircraft.

But first, he needed the U.S. to lift sanctions on potash. The country had circumvented sanctions by selling virtually all its products to China, for a much lower price.

Coale and the U.S. team saw the benefits to U.S. farmers. But in return, Belarus would need to exchange a significant number of prisoners.

By mid-December, he was back in Minsk, then on the forested border to oversee the release of 123 prisoners. Days later, the Treasury eased sanctions on three Belarusian potash companies, which amount to some 4% of the country’s gross domestic product.

Then on Thursday, Lukashenko told his People’s Assembly the Belarus, didn’t need Boeing jets after all: “We have agreed with Putin that we will buy Russian planes.”

Write to Annie Linskey at annie.linskey@wsj.com, Drew Hinshaw at drew.hinshaw@wsj.com, Joe Parkinson at joe.parkinson@wsj.com and Meridith McGraw at Meridith.McGraw@WSJ.com