Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the Belarusian opposition leader, is in Washington.
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| [Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya] |
Belarus opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya requested greater assistance from the US on Monday, as she began a week-long visit to Washington to meet with top Biden administration officials.
During an interview with VOA, she stated, "I call on the United States of America to be with us." “Supporting all those individuals is incredibly crucial when a dictatorship is destroying everything in Belarus, killing the mass media, ruining all the organizations.”
Tsikhanouskaya staged a gathering with supporters at Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., shortly after her arrival. She has meetings planned at the State Department, the White House, with members of Congress, and with Samantha Power, the Administrator of the US Agency for International Development.
Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko has maintained a tight grip on the country since 1994, cracking down on street protests that erupted in August over a presidential election that his opponents claim was manipulated to keep him in power.
Tsikhanouskaya, 38, ran for the election instead of her husband, Sergei Tsikhanouskiy, a video blogger who has been in prison since May 2020 on allegations of public order violations, which he disputes. Following Lukashenko's crackdown, Tsikhanouskaya escaped to Lithuania.