Interview: Belarus leader in exile on ‘defending our common values’

Vladimir Putin has just made Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s job feel even more urgent.

Over the weekend, the Russian president declared that he was preparing to position tactical nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus by July 1, a move seemingly designed to shake the West’s commitment to Ukraine.

Ms. Tsikhanouskaya, the exiled leader of Belarus’ pro-democracy movement, has spent much of the past week in Washington, meeting with members of Congress, top Biden administration officials, and members of the Belarusian diaspora.

The goal: to publicize what she calls the “oppressions” of Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko and his “cronies,” and by extension his patron in Moscow, President Putin. The Russian leader’s announcement Saturday of preparations for short-range nuclear weaponry in Belarus – which also borders on Ukraine – underscores the high-stakes nature of the war, including for Ukraine’s neighbors.

“For the Belarusian people, ... Russia stands for war and poverty, and Europe stands for peace and stability and prosperity,” Ms. Tsikhanouskaya said in a Monitor interview Saturday at a Washington hotel. “We have already chosen our direction.”

The White House said it would “monitor the implications” of Mr. Putin’s announcement, but sees no sign of imminent risk. Mr. Putin has threatened the use of short-range nuclear weapons in Ukraine before, and seems to do so when the war in Ukraine is going badly.

To Ms. Tsikhanouskaya, the nuclear move is just more evidence that Russia is an “occupying force, violating national security and putting Belarus on the collision course with its neighbors and the international community,” as she said on Twitter.

Tactical, or short-range, nuclear weapons should not be confused with strategic, long-range nuclear weapons, whose use would have catastrophic results. But even a mention of smaller, “battlefield” nuclear weapons incites fear, and Mr. Putin knows that.

Mr. Putin has long been thought to have plans to annex Belarus outright, and his latest nuclear gambit only reinforces that idea. Russia used neighboring Belarus as a staging area for its invasion of Ukraine 13 months ago. Mr. Lukashenko, in power almost three decades, has done nearly all he can to help his patron and recently said he’d commit troops to fight in Ukraine if Belarus is attacked. But such a move could be explosive: An independent research group, Belarus Change Tracker, finds only 7% of the Belarusian population supports joining the war on Russia’s side.

Belarusian citizens, Ms. Tsikhanouskaya says, are trying to help Ukraine any way they can – sabotaging shipments from Russia traversing Belarus into Ukraine early in the war, transmitting information on Russian military positions into Ukraine, and sometimes joining the war themselves and fighting “shoulder to shoulder with Ukrainians.” She puts the number of Belarusian volunteers in Ukraine at about 1,000, and also recounts a recent report of a drone attack by Belarusian partisans that severely damaged a Russian surveillance aircraft.

A mom-turned-opposition candidate

Ms. Tsikhanouskaya came to her improbable role as the face of Belarusian dissent via her husband. In May 2020, Sergei Tsikhanousky – a popular video blogger and opposition presidential candidate – was arrested, as were the other anti-Lukashenko candidates. Ms. Tsikhanouskaya, then a 37-year-old stay-at-home mom with two young children, one of them disabled, stepped forward to run in her husband’s place.

In the August 2020 election, Mr. Lukashenko claimed he won 80% of the vote, sparking mass unrest. Ms. Tsikhanouskaya was forced into exile in neighboring Lithuania with her children. Her husband remains in a Belarusian prison, where he is serving an 18-year sentence. Ms. Tsikhanouskaya was tried in absentia and, earlier this month, sentenced to 15 years.

Today, she juggles her role as a mother and daughter with her advocacy for a democratic Belarus, traveling to Western capitals and international forums; meeting with world leaders and policymakers, think tanks and supporters; and always making time for the Belarusian diaspora.

When asked what she’s hoping to get out of her current Washington visit, Ms. Tsikhanouskaya said, “I want to attract more attention of ordinary Americans, you know, for them not to forget about Belarus and/or feel fatigue over the situation in our country. It’s the moral obligation of every free person to support those who are defending our common values.”

In exile, she presides over a team of advisers, called the United Transitional Cabinet, which the Lukashenko regime has branded an “extremist group.”

In July 2021, in her first interview with the Monitor, Ms. Tsikhanouskaya spoke cautiously of her abilities, saying, “I always considered myself a so-called weak woman, because I had a husband who took care of the whole family.”

Now she speaks as an experienced advocate. “We already have some deliverables” from this visit to Washington, she says, referring to a new package of economic sanctions announced March 24 on Belarusian government officials, state-owned enterprises, and Mr. Lukashenko’s aircraft.

In a meeting at the State Department last week, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman announced a strategic dialogue with the Belarusian democratic movement and civil society, to begin later this year.

Ms. Tsikhanouskaya also met with congressional members of the Free Belarus Caucus, participated in a conference with House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, flew to Boston for an appearance at Harvard University, and will testify Tuesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“I try to provide them a normal childhood”

But her family is never far from thought. Her 12-year-old son, who was born with near-deafness, and 7-year-old daughter both attend school in Vilnius.

“I try to provide them a normal childhood,” Ms. Tsikhanouskaya says. “But of course they know where their daddy is. They know his history.”

She shows her children old videos of their dad, to give them a “virtual presence” of him in their lives. And they write letters to their father, which he receives. He also receives letters from his mother. But that’s it. The government, she says, cracked down on a public letter-writing campaign to political prisoners that began with the 2020 unrest.

Ms. Tsikhanouskaya says she can communicate with her husband via his lawyer, and the news is rarely good.

“First of all, political prisoners in Belarus are in much, much worse conditions than ordinary criminals,” she says. “They’re constantly tortured, physically and morally.”

He’s kept in isolation, his cell is cold, his clothing is thin, and the food is “extremely poor,” she says. “The light is always on. They’re knocking on the doors and not giving people opportunities to sleep.”

Ms. Tsikhanouskaya reveals that her parents, retirees in their 60s, still live in Belarus and don’t want to leave the country. Are they able to live a normal life?

“Nobody in Belarus can live a normal life,” she sighs. “I understand that my parents, there is additional pressure on them. They live in constant waiting for something [that] might happen. Every day, I’m checking – are you OK? Are you OK?”

Last Saturday, March 25, was an unofficial holiday known as Belarus Freedom Day, commemorating the declaration of independence by the Belarusian Democratic Republic in 1918. Despite a light rain in Washington, a crowd of Belarusians, some now American citizens, came out to a rally for Belarus in front of the White House, and to hear Ms. Tsikhanouskaya speak. A few Ukrainians, carrying yellow-and-blue umbrellas, joined in solidarity.

A man named Dmitri, who declined to give his last name, says he came to the United States from Minsk, the Belarusian capital, nine years ago. He joined the rally, he says, “because your culture and national identity, that’s something that stays with you even if you live in another country.”

And what about the rain? “You will find,” he said, “that Belarusians are very sturdy.”