“If you go out and start protesting, you’ll be thrown in jail,” Balenok said. “Maybe you’ll come out one day. Maybe not.”
Exiled Belarus opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya protested the election from the Polish capital Warsaw on Sunday. “Today, we marched for freedom in Warsaw — united and unshaken, honoring our heroes who gave their lives for freedom,” she posted on X, alongside photos from the demonstrations.
“Together, we are unstoppable,” she said. “As Belarusians, we will never lose hope. We will reclaim our country and return home stronger than ever.”
In an interview with POLITICO last week, Tsikhanouskaya urged world leaders to “be prepared for the next moment of opportunity,” and to have a “strategy” to take advantage of the next potential tipping point when Lukashenko’s dictatorship could fall.
“There will be only two alternatives for Belarus: Either somebody very pro-Russia like Lukashenko’s followers or it will be democratic forces,” she said.
As he cast his vote on Sunday, Lukashenko told reporters that some of his political opponents had “chosen” to go to prison or into exile. While no one was prevented from speaking out in Belarus, prison was “for people who opened their mouths too wide, to put it bluntly, those who broke the law,” he was reported as saying by Reuters.
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