The government of Belarus freed 52 political prisoners to Lithuania on Thursday in a deal brokered by the Trump administration. Among those released were 14 foreign nationals; journalists and bloggers; opposition politicians; and leaders of mass protests in 2020 against Belarus’s authoritarian President Aleksandr Lukashenko. Many of those released say they were starved and tortured. In return for their release, the United States is lifting sanctions on Belarus’s national airline. The deal came after Trump envoy Keith Kellogg traveled to Minsk, where he presented President Lukashenko with a pair of cufflinks and a letter from Trump that Kellogg described as a “special sign of friendship.”