Pakistan, June 23 -- Belarus freed top opposition figure Sergei Tikhanovsky and more than a dozen other political prisoners Saturday following an appeal from the White House, Minsk said, a sign of warming ties between Washington and Belarus-ally Moscow.

The release came just hours after US special envoy Keith Kellogg met Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in Minsk, the highest-profile visit of a US official to the authoritarian state in years.

Tikhanovsky's wife Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who took the mantle of the opposition movement after her husband's jailing, thanked US President Donald Trump directly for brokering the deal.

European politicians and members of Belarus's exiled opposition also welcomed the news. "This is fantast...