Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and her team plan to move from Lithuania, where she has lived in exile since fleeing a sweeping crackdown in 2020, to neighbouring Poland, sources close to her told AFP.
The decision follows Lithuania’s move last year to downgrade her security protection, a step that unsettled her entourage and raised concerns about how welcome they remain in the country.
Tikhanovskaya challenged long-time President Alexander Lukashenko in the disputed 2020 election, which the opposition says she actually won.
Afterward, authorities crushed mass protests, detaining thousands and forcing tens of thousands of Belarusians to leave the country.
While many exiles settled in Poland and Lithuania, the opposition leadership chose Vilnius as its main base. Her team has since reported growing threats from Belarus’s KGB after the security downgrade in October.
According to members of her entourage and a Polish foreign ministry source, Tikhanovskaya will soon relocate with her staff to Warsaw, where she recently met President Karol Nawrocki, while her husband Sergei Tikhanovsky remains in the United States for security reasons. The announcement comes amid broader tensions, as Lithuania is also reviewing the residence permit of Russian opposition figure Leonid Volkov following the leak of his private messages.
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