Belarus has released prominent opposition activist Siarhei Tsikhanouski, the husband of exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, after a recent visit by the most senior official from the Trump administration. The release was confirmed by Tsikhanouskaya’s office on Saturday, where it said that Tsikhanouski and 13 other political prisoners had safely arrived in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Tsikhanouski, an activist blogger and a harshly critical voice of President Alexander Lukashenko, was detained in 2020 when he announced he would run as an opponent to the longtime leader of Belarus in the country’s presidential election that year. His detention disqualified him from running, and his wife, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, took it upon herself to mobilize a national campaign on his behalf.
The results of the 2020 election announced Lukashenko as the winner for a sixth term, but the result was universally denounced by opposition groups at home and Western nations alike as rigged. The declaration sparked widespread protests across Belarus, prompting a vicious crackdown by the regime. Tsikhanouskaya went into exile during the violence, and her husband was subsequently given a 19 and a half-year prison sentence for inciting mass disturbance.
The release timing of Tsikhanouski has raised eyebrows, following Belarusian state media announcement hours earlier that President Lukashenko had a meeting with Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, in Minsk. Although the details of the discussion have not been made public, experts opine that the prisoner release could have been one component of more extensive diplomatic initiatives or conciliatory acts.
Tsikhanouskaya welcomed the release as a “step forward” and hoped that additional political prisoners would be released shortly. Hundreds of political prisoners are estimated to still be jailed in Belarus by human rights organizations. The latest news marks the introduction of a new element to Belarus’s unfolding relationship with Western nations during further geopolitical changes in the region.
