When U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the release of U.S. citizen Anastasia Nuhfer from detention in Belarus on January 26, the news caught many by surprise. Her name had never appeared in any public statements by U.S. officials, nor was she included in the official list of U.S. citizens detained abroad.
Perhaps even more puzzling, her detention was not known to Belarusian human rights activists either -- she was not mentioned on a registry of political prisoners on the website of Vyasna, one of Belarus's leading human rights organizations.
But an investigation by RFE/RL's Belarus Service has uncovered more details about Nuhfer's life in the United States and why she made so many trips to Belarus.
Twin Sister
Public records show the 48-year-old -- who also goes by her married name of Anastasia Putnam -- residing in a suburb of Dallas, Texas, with her adult children. According to her social-media postings, she ran a dog boarding facility and had done volunteer work with Wegotcha!, a nonprofit that makes meals for the underprivileged and families with sick children.
Her connections to Belarus run deep. From her postings on Facebook and Instagram, it appears that Nuhfer had a twin sister there and regularly visited Belarus with her children.
According to Cyberpartisans, a group of IT specialists who oppose the authoritarian Belarusian government, Nuhfer was born Anastasia Uladzimirauna Razhkova in Minsk in 1977 to a doctor mother and entrepreneur father. After studying at a pedagogical university, she emigrated to the United States in 1995. The group claims that she was in possession of a Belarusian passport intended for citizens who permanently live abroad.
U.S. public records show that, after emigrating to the United States, Nuhfer married a U.S. citizen in 1999. A few years later, the couple had children, who were both granted American and Belarusian citizenship.
According to a LinkedIn profile, Nuhfer graduated from Arkansas Tech University with a degree in information systems, followed by a master's in information systems management from the University of Arkansas. She then worked as a systems administrator at a construction and technology corporation.
In 2013, she married another U.S. citizen and took the name Nuhfer, the name under which she is currently registered in her passport.
Social media posts paint a picture of someone deeply connected to her Belarusian heritage. In recent years, Nuhfer toured her homeland, visiting historic sites including the Nyasvizh and Kosava palaces, the Ahinski estate in Zalesse, and the cities of Pinsk, Vileyka, Zaslauyes, and Minsk. She also went to Russia, with visits to St. Petersburg and Karelia.
Mysterious Detention
The circumstances of her detention are still shrouded in mystery. A former senior Belarusian diplomat told the Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity, that Anastasia Nuhfer's arrest was linked to the 2020 protests but did not provide any details.
Following a contentious presidential election in August 2020, thousands of Belarusians took to the streets to protest the hard-line regime of Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenko, citing widespread fraud. The authorities responded swiftly, beating protesters and arresting over 30,000 people, many of whom alleged they had been tortured and mistreated while in custody.
The anonymous diplomat revealed to AP that Lukashenko himself had offered to release Nuhfer "as a gesture of goodwill," while refusing to set free Belarusian opposition figures and human rights activists.
From her social-media posts, Nuhfer appears to have been in Belarus during and after the 2020 election campaign. Later, on October 13, 2020, she shared an Instagram post featuring a video of a musician playing the dulcimer, a wooden stringed instrument, with an election poster visible in the background. The post was accompanied by the caption: "Election Day in Belarus. The events of that day and the following days have pushed this wonderful music to the background."
Not Politically Active
Two years later, in a Facebook post from March 15, 2022, she hinted that she had been affected by the political situation in Belarus. "It was not easy to focus on my studies in light of the events in my home country that directly affected me and my family, but I managed," she wrote.
Nuhfer's social media presence shows no obvious signs of political activism. Her Instagram account mainly featured shared humorous videos from channels called "Belarus Brain" and "My Country Belarus."
It is still not clear when exactly Nuhfer was detained. According to AP, citing the U.S. State Department, Nuhfer was detained in early December 2024. Her last post on social media was on December 7, 2024.
Earlier this month, a consular officer from Washington reportedly gained access to an unnamed American prisoner in Belarus, which was noted as a rare case.
Nuhfer's passport was due to expire in January 2025, leading to speculation that she was in the process of trying to renew it.
RFE/RL's Belarus Service has contacted Nuhfer and her family but has not yet received a response.
