Belarusian opposition leader Siarhei Tsikhanouski released from prison following visit by US special envoy

The jailed Belarusian opposition leader Siarhei Tsikhanouski has been released from prison after over five years, his wife, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, announced on X on Saturday.

“I can’t believe it. Siarhei is here — with me and our children. What we’ve dreamed of for 5 years has finally happened,” an overjoyed Tsikhanouskaya wrote, adding: “Tonight, I’m taking the evening off to talk with my husband, to let him see his children again, after so many years. Thank you all for the tremendous support!”

Tsikhanouski was among 14 political prisoners who were released from long sentences in the notoriously oppressive police state following a visit to the Belarusian capital Minsk by US Special Envoy Keith Kellogg.

Other Belarusian opposition figures to have been released alongside Tsikhanouski included Natallia Dulina, Ihar Karnei, Halina Krasnianskaya, Kiryl Balakhanau, and Akihiro Haevsky-Khanada.

“President Trump’s strong leadership led to the release of 14 prisoners from Belarus today. Thanks to the Lithuanian government for its cooperation and assistance — they remain a true friend and ally,” wrote Kellogg’s deputy, John Cole, on X.

Tsikhanouski, a blogger and prominent critic of Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko who was standing as the main opposition candidate in Belarus’s 2020 presidential election, was arrested in May 2020 ahead of the vote. As a result, his wife stepped in to replace him, and was widely judged to have won the election.

Tsikhanouskaya, who has since then become the face of Belarus’s democratic opposition, which she currently leads from Lithuania, was forced into exile shortly afterwards.

Having been behind bars since 2020, when mass protests broke out across Belarus to protest the results of the stolen election, Tsikhanouski was sentenced to 18 years in prison on politically trumped up charges in 2021, since when, according to Belarusian independent media outlet Nasha Niva, he was “held in complete isolation from the outside world,” and “nobody had heard anything about Tsikhanouski for more than two years.”

In a subsequent post on X on Saturday evening, Tsikhanouskaya called her husband’s release “a wonderful moment of hope”, though she added that it also “reminds us how far we still have to go” and pledged to “keep fighting for freedom for all”.