Belarus “unilaterally” released the American woman, the US Secretary of State, from detention Marco Rubio announced on Sunday, as the Kremlin-allied country held a rigged election poised to produce a strongman President Alexander Lukashenko another term on top of his three decades in power.

Rubio's post on the X social network stated that the US citizen is Anastasia Nuhfer. He is said to have been detained under former President Joe Biden, but did not say when or why.

Rubio's announcement comes after a wave of prisoner releases by Lukashenko, often described as “Europe's last dictator.” Belarus' oldest human rights organization, Viasna, says more than 1,250 people remain in detention for opposing the authorities.

Lukashenko's opponents, many of whom are jailed or exiled abroad because of his relentless crackdown on dissent and free speech, have called Sunday's election a sham.The last election in 2020 has sparked months of unprecedented mass protests History of Belarus.

The U.S. State Department announced later Sunday that Nuhfer was detained in early December 2024. It said a consular officer from Washington had been granted rare access to an American detainee in Belarus earlier this month.

A former senior Belarusian diplomat told the AP that Nuhfer's arrest was linked to the 2020 protests, though he did not elaborate. The source, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons, said Lukashenko himself offered to release the US citizen “as a goodwill gesture” while refusing to release Belarusian opposition and human rights activists.

Nuhfer's release surprised the public and even Belarusian activists.His name was not published publicly and was not included in the lists of political prisoners.

Pavel Sapelka of the human rights group Viasna said that he and his colleagues were not aware of his arrest or the circumstances surrounding it.

Lukashenko's support for the war in Ukraine has led to a breakdown in Belarus' relations with the US and the EU, ending the West's use of his gamesmanship to extract more subsidies from the Kremlin.

But Artyom Shreibman, a Belarus expert at the Carnegie Center for Russia and Eurasia, predicted that Minsk may try to loosen its total dependence on Russia after the election, again seeking to reach out to the West.

“Lukashenko's interim goal is to use the elections to establish his legitimacy and try to overcome his isolation in order to at least start a conversation with the West about easing sanctions,” Schreibman said.

It was unclear what concessions Minsk asked for in exchange for the release of the US citizen.