Do we like them?

Do we like Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya?

Our score: 8 out of 10. A decent record on the right side, with real sacrifice, but thin on her own words about LGBTQ+ people and a messy family-and-office feud.

Tsikhanouskaya never planned to be a politician. She was an English teacher and a mum, and in 2020 her husband, video blogger Siarhei Tsikhanouski, was arrested before he could run against Alexander Lukashenko. When his candidacy was blocked she stepped in. Her own line is that she never planned to run for office.

Lukashenko claimed more than 80 per cent of the vote, and she and independent observers disputed it. The EU Council called the election neither free nor fair. The protests that followed were the biggest in Belarus's modern history, and rights group Viasna counted over 30,000 detentions. She was held for hours at the election authority and then left for Lithuania after officials pressured her.

The regime came after her anyway. In 2023 a Minsk court convicted her in absentia and sentenced her to 15 years, on charges including treason and trying to seize power. She has called the case revenge, and the context is a dictatorship's courts, not a fair trial. Her husband was released in June 2025 under a US-brokered deal.

On the harm test, nothing nasty turned up. She urged Latvia and Lithuania to keep their borders with Belarus open, because for Belarusians fleeing prison it can be the only way out, and she said they must save connections between people. In January 2026 she warned Donald Trump that Lukashenko wasn't to be trusted. The gap is LGBTQ+ issues: her office has hosted a roadmap event on equality, but I found no personal statement from her.

There's some mess around her. In December 2025 her husband's former press secretary accused him of rudeness and of feuding with her office, and he denied planning a year in the US and said he had no complaints against the office. She didn't comment. This is a family-and-staff squabble, not something she was accused of.

Her security protection in Lithuania was downgraded at the end of 2025, with authorities saying the threat level was lower and critics saying her status had been cut. In January 2026 she told Lithuanian lawmakers she'd move to Poland. The LRT report doesn't say why, so I won't guess.