Belarus opposition leader urges people to be ready to take to the streets
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Exiled Belarus opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya has urged people to be ready to take to the streets to topple the regime of dictator Alexander Lukashenko.
Speaking at POLITICO’s P28 event in Brussels, Tsikhanouskaya said Lukashenko and strongmen like him were “not invincible.”
“I really want people to be ready to use a real moment of opportunity to be on the streets and dismantle this regime,” she said. “But we have to feel this trigger, this moment, when we really can dismantle it.”
Belarusians head to the polls in January to elect a president. Lukashenko has been in power since 1994 and will almost certainly retain his job in a rigged vote that Tsikhanouskaya derides as a “farce.”
But the election “is not [the] time for Belarusian people to go to the streets, to uprise visibly, because you know repressions are too high. Every time in Belarus people are detained, you just don’t see it.”
Tsikhanouskaya ran for president after her husband, a leading opposition candidate, was arrested and jailed during the 2020 election campaign.
The vote sparked mass protests that nearly caused Lukashenko’s downfall — but that were eventually crushed in a brutal Russia-backed campaign to suppress opponents.
Tsikhanouskaya fled Belarus shortly after and has since lived in exile in Lithuania.
“I believe in democracy, but you have to have courage to use all your tools to fight with dictators,” she said.
Photo: Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya visits Berlin
