Freed from prison in Belarus, exiled opposition leader’s husband accused of battling her instead of Lukashenko

Six months ago, after serving five years behind bars, Belarusian opposition figure Siarhei Tsikhanouski walked free. He emerged from the fervor of 2020 — when he was a popular political blogger preparing a run for the presidency — into the far bleaker landscape of 2025. Now reunited with his family in exile, Tsikhanouski finds himself cast as the “first gentleman” beside his wife, Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. When Tsikhanouski was arrested, Tsikhanouskaya was a stay-at-home mother who entered the presidential race in his stead. By the time he was freed, she had become the central figure of Belarus’s democratic movement, with a full advisory team and extensive ties across the West. As Tsikhanouski searches for his own political footing, he has repeatedly criticized his wife’s office in public. Here’s the latest chapter in their uneasy political relationship.

On November 29, Siarhei Biaspalau, the press secretary for Siarhei Tsikhanouski, announced that he was quitting his job. In a long Facebook post, Biaspalau accused Tsikhanouski of lacking basic people skills, rejecting criticism, and picking fights with the office of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.

Biaspalau said he first offered to help Tsikhanouski after the opposition figure’s release from prison, when Tsikhanouski broke down in tears at his first press conference while describing seeing his children again. Initially, Biaspalau planned only to arrange a few meetings with bloggers and journalists in Poland. But he ultimately agreed to become Tsikhanouski’s press secretary, and the two worked closely through late September. Even then, Biaspalau wrote, he was increasingly alarmed by what he called Tsikhanouski’s “boorish behavior” and his complaints about his wife’s team — though the collaboration continued.

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“Toward the end of September, Siarhei put our daily work on hold,” Biaspalau wrote.

He was planning to go to the United States in January to study English. His focus had shifted entirely to the American track. That’s where he sees his future, where the big donors are, where he thinks people “love and await him.” He even suggested I come along, but I declined [for personal reasons]. What stunned me was how easily he agreed to disappear for a year, leaving his wife and children in Lithuania. He’d cried publicly about not seeing his children for five years — and now he was preparing for yet another year away from his family.

In November, Tsikhanouski asked Biaspalau to fly to the U.S. to film his meeting with Belarusian émigrés in Los Angeles, offering to cover the airfare as payment for Biaspalau’s September salary. Biaspalau accepted. In the end, though, he says he had to pay for his own return ticket: Tsikhanouski allegedly refused to reimburse him because Biaspalau would not publish, under his own name, a statement criticizing Tsikhanouskaya’s office over the Magnitsky Award. “After that kind of blackmail — after he tried to use me as a tool in his personal vendettas — I have no desire to keep working with Siarhei,” the former press secretary said.

What happened with the Magnitsky Award?

In November, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and Siarhei Tsikhanouski were named recipients of the Magnitsky Award in the category of “Outstanding Opposition Politicians.” Only Sviatlana attended the ceremony in London. Siarhei said he couldn’t make it because he learned about the award only the day before, on X, and didn’t have time to obtain a U.K. visa.

Siarhei Biaspalau, however, says that in September he filled out Tsikhanouski’s U.K. visa application at the request of Tsikhanouskaya’s office, but Tsikhanouski never completed the process because it wasn’t a priority for him at the time.

“Yes, the office didn’t offer much help, but they did explain the visa process and how to apply. All that was left was to wait for an appointment to give fingerprints… He simply didn’t follow through on the visa. The American track mattered more to him,” Biaspalau said.

Yet the statement Tsikhanouski allegedly pushed Biaspalau to publish claimed that the office “did nothing to help with the visa or inform him about the award, and that Siarhei was ‘used and then thrown away.’”

‘He wants to be the one in charge’

After posting his statement, Biaspalau gave several interviews to Belarusian outlets, where he elaborated on the conflict between Tsikhanouski and Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s office. According to Biaspalau, Tsikhanouski initially praised her office after his release, but soon began complaining that its leaders were exploiting him for political gain and trying to turn him into a “mascot.” “He wants to be the one in charge — not just a mascot or a ‘[first] gentleman.’ He wants to run the show,” Biaspalau told Nasha Niva.

Biaspalau said Tsikhanouski cycled through several plans after leaving prison but ultimately fixated on traveling to the U.S. and meeting President Donald Trump, for several reasons. First, Tsikhanouski believes he owes his freedom to Trump and shares the president’s political views. Second, he feels that Europe’s political space is already crowded with other Belarusian opposition figures — above all, his wife. And third, he believes that “the money is in America.”

The idea of a U.S. trip, Biaspalau said, was encouraged — if not partly financed — by Vadzim Prakopieu, a Belarusian opposition figure known for criticizing Tsikhanouskaya’s office. In recent months, Prakopieu has become Tsikhanouski’s chief adviser, Biaspalau claimed. “Siarhei also liked Prakopieu’s line that he should be independent. I agreed with that, too — but that shouldn’t mean undermining your wife or her team,” he recounted. “I asked Siarhei whether he was [prepared to go to war with his wife]. He said, ‘No, I’m not in a fight with her — we love each other. It’s the [the office leadership] who are the problem.”

“In the end,” Biaspalau said, “Lukashenko and his security services were, unfortunately, right [in betting] that this would turn into a Trojan horse.”

The Lukashenko look

After Biaspalau’s accusations, Siarhei Tsikhanouski said he had spoken with representatives of his wife’s office to clear the air around the Magnitsky Award. “We concluded that the office really hadn’t informed me about the award because the situation kept changing, and they hadn’t helped with my British visa. They apologized, and the incident is fully resolved. I have no complaints against the office,” Tsikhanouski said. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s office — which had previously insisted that Tsikhanouski had only himself to blame for failing to get a visa — did not comment on his version of the conversation.

Tsikhanouski also denied Biaspalau’s claim that he was preparing to spend a year in the United States. “I never made such statements, and I ask you not to spread gossip,” he said. “I’m with my family in Vilnius and have no plans to be apart from my children for long. You have my word on that.” He emphasized that he loves his wife and is “infinitely grateful” for everything she has done for him personally and for Belarus. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya did not comment.

Howeverm Vadzim Prakopieu did say something, hinting that Biaspalau’s accusations were orchestrated by Franak Viačorka, Tsikhanouskaya’s chief of staff. He then argued that Tsikhanouski would be well suited to being the Belarusian opposition’s “person” in the United States. “Beyond his heroic story, he’s also a serial entrepreneur. He isn’t afraid of being without grants. He’s genuinely curious about how U.S. politics works, and he learns fast,” Prakopieu said.

Judging by the reaction online, the scandal did little to help Tsikhanouski’s reputation. Many commenters criticized him, and some even compared him to Aleksandr Lukashenko — a parallel first made by Biaspalau, who claimed that both men share a habit of “humiliating and retaliating from the shadows,” and that Tsikhanouski, like Lukashenko, is rude to people and “refuses to listen to anyone.”

A public private life

Part of the public debate now revolves around Tsikhanouski’s qualities as a husband and father. Some social media users have expressed sympathy for Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and have even urged her to divorce him. Others argued that the couple’s relationship is their private business.

In a column for Zerkalo, gender studies researcher Iryna Sidorskaya explained why, in her view, a politician’s personal life is not automatically off-limits.

It reveals the values they live by. If someone speaks about human rights, it matters how they treat the people beside them. If they champion ‘family values’ but show rudeness or contempt toward their own family — that’s a signal. […] When personal decisions directly affect their ability to work, shape the movement’s reputation, or call into question the integrity of their declared principles, it becomes a public matter. Siarhei Tsikhanouski’s case is exactly that. The behavior of someone who symbolized the struggle for five years inevitably affects the atmosphere around the democratic movement.

Sidorskaya argued that while it’s legitimate to discuss politicians’ personal lives, the conversation must remain respectful.

Society has every right to ask questions, but it shouldn’t become a mob dictating family decisions. Where’s the boundary? It lies where the personal stops being only personal. If a politician’s behavior affects their team, strains resources, erodes trust, damages the movement’s reputation, forms toxic power dynamics, or reveals an inability to take responsibility — then it warrants discussion. If the conversation drifts into intimate details, that’s an invasion of privacy. The focus should remain on how power, responsibility, and personal choices shape the public sphere.

A split in political visions

The debate about the Tsikhanouskis’ relationship also has a political dimension. In recent months, Tsikhanouski has been promoting the idea of the “Finlandization” of Belarus to Western audiences — raising it in the European Parliament, at Yale University, and in a Washington Post op-ed. His proposal envisions Belarus becoming a “neutral, strong country — no foreign troops, no aggression, no constant crises,” backed by the E.U. and the United States.

“Right now, the United States is speaking to Russia in a rather unsavory but practical way,” he told an audience at Yale. “Somewhere in that space, there is room to present a neutral Belarus as a smart investment in stability — not as a win for the West, not as a loss for Russia, but as something that helps everyone avoid a bigger mess.”

There are several concerns with this strategy. First, it differs markedly from the political line consistently promoted by Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s office. That divergence is especially visible in Tsikhanouski’s Washington Post op-ed. Yet, as political analyst Yury Drakakhrust told Belsat, Tsikhanouski lacks the political capital to present a viable alternative to Tsikhanouskaya’s approach.

Second, some experts argue that “Finlandization” would only cement the limits on Belarus’s sovereignty. Among them is Grigory Nizhnikov, a senior researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. Speaking to Belsat, he recalled how after World War II, the USSR exercised influence over both Finland’s foreign and domestic policy through formal obligations that remained in place until the Soviet collapse. Russia already shapes Belarus’s foreign policy today, he noted; if those constraints were formalized, it would be even harder for Belarus to break free in the future.