Young mum who challenged ‘Europe’s last dictator’ in Belarus election emerges in Lithuania
- Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the runner-up in the disputed Belarusian election, flees to Lithuania
- Protests broke out in Belarus capital Minsk following the landslide victory of veteran leader Alexander Lukashenko
The main challenger in Belarus’s disputed presidential election had fled to Lithuania on Tuesday after a second night of street clashes between police and opposition supporters left a protester dead.
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who has claimed victory over authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko in Sunday’s vote, had arrived in the neighbouring country and was safe, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius said.
He did not provide any further details but EU and Nato member Lithuania, which like Belarus was once part of the Soviet Union, has a history of granting refuge to Belarusian and Russian opposition figures.
Tikhanouskaya denied being forced to leave Belarus, contradicting comments from her campaign team, and said the decision to leave had been very difficult.
“I made a very difficult decision. It’s a decision I made absolutely independently,” she said in a video posted on YouTube.
Belarus’s state border committee also denied accusations that Tikhanouskaya had been forcibly removed to neighbouring Lithuania.