Belarus’s authoritarian president Alexander Lukashenko on Friday greeted U.S. evangelist Franklin Graham, who arrived in the tightly controlled country to hold the largest evangelical Christian gathering in its history, and asked him to convey warm greetings to President Donald Trump, telling Graham that Trump has “reliable friends and supporters in Belarus.”
Graham, the president of Samaritan’s Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, was accompanied by Greta Van Susteren, the anchor for Newsmax TV who is married to Trump’s special envoy for Belarus, John Coale. Lukashenko linked the improvement in bilateral ties directly to Trump. “Without the U.S. president, it might have been more difficult for us to establish our relations,” he said.
The gathering, billed as the Festival of Hope, is expected to draw thousands to an indoor sports arena in Minsk. It comes amid a rapid sequence of U.S.-brokered deals. In March, Lukashenko ordered the release of 250 political prisoners, and Washington agreed to lift sanctions from two Belarusian state banks, the Finance Ministry, and the country’s top potash producers. A follow-on deal in April secured the freedom of prominent journalist Andrzej Poczobut in a swap with Poland that saw 10 people freed in total.
Despite the releases, the Viasna human rights center says Belarus still holds 845 political prisoners, including 22 journalists. Lukashenko has ruled the nation of 9.5 million with an iron fist for more than three decades. His grip was challenged by mass protests after the 2020 presidential election, which demonstrators and Western observers viewed as rigged, but he crushed the unrest — tens of thousands were detained and many were beaten, while prominent opposition figures fled or were imprisoned. Last year he won a seventh term in an election the opposition dismissed as a farce.
Belarus’s opposition leader-in-exile, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, told The Associated Press that she hopes Graham’s visit will advance the release of all political prisoners. “We continue to push for a complete end to the harsh political repressions in Belarus,” she said.
The Belarusian authorities’ permission for the large evangelical gathering marks a departure from years of state repression directed at religious groups. Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant clergy were jailed, silenced, or forced into exile for protesting the 2020 election. A 2024 law required all religious organizations to reregister, with the threat of being outlawed if their loyalty to the state was in question. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has listed Belarus among countries with religious freedom violations.
Natallia Vasilevich, coordinator of the Christian Vision monitoring group, said that even though Graham’s visit was a “mega-important event” for evangelicals, they continue to face a repressive environment. “Some believers view Graham’s visit as a miracle and a window of opportunity,” Vasilevich said, “while others see a risk that they will have to turn a blind eye to repression and take part in something that makes the regime look nice.”