Belarus, Russia’s closest ally, has released an American prisoner and two others from jail, an exiled opposition group said Wednesday, in the latest sign that the autocratic Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, was looking for ways to improve frozen relations with the West.

The releases, announced by an opposition group led by Svetlana Tikhanovskaya in Lithuania, a neighbor of Belarus, followed what Western diplomats said was a secret visit Wednesday to Minsk, the Belarusian capital, by a U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state, Christopher W. Smith. The group did not identify the American who was freed.

Franak Viacorka, chief of staff to Tikhanovskaya, said on Telegram he had visited the U.S. Embassy in Vilnius, Lithuania, and picked up one of the people he said had been released, Alena Movshuk, whom he described as an activist. He did not name the freed American but said the third person set free was Andrey Kuznechyk, a journalist with Radio Free Europe, a U.S.-funded news organization.

— The New York Times