Paul Moss

The words of Maria Kalesnikava standing outside a prison in Belarus as her sister Tatyana Komic was released from prison.

Komic was just one of 123 people who were released on Saturday.

all of them widely regarded as political prisoners locked up for opposing the regime of Alexander Lukashenko.

They were freed following negotiations between Belarus and the United States, a reason for gratitude, according to the Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, as she told my colleague Owen Bennett-Jones.

Has Europe got anything to do with this or is it all coming from Washington?

Your husband was released, I think, after five years in prison back in June.

Would you say he's gone through that rehabilitation process yet?

How difficult is it?

Can you just give us your assessment of what the government in Belarus, you know, the leadership, what they will be thinking about this?

Will they be anxious that they've done this?

Will they be nervous about it?

Or because they're all abroad, not that bothered?

Svetlana Tsokhanovskaya.

So why has the US been so keen, apparently, to get political prisoners released in Belarus?

It's not a country Donald Trump has talked much about.

And why would President Lukashenko be happy to free them?

He has, after all, described his political opponents as bandits and opponents of the nation.

We asked Nigel Gould-Davies, a former UK ambassador to Belarus, who's now a Russia and Eurasia analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

It's a very good deal for Lukashenko.

He has released barely 10% of the political prisons that he holds, although he might release more in due course.