Belarusian opposition figures Sergey Tikhanovsky, and his wife, presidential contender Svetlana Tikhanovskaya vowed to continue their fight against Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko and seek the release of another 1,000 political prisoners who are still languishing in Minsk’s jails.

The unexpected release followed a meeting in Minsk on June 15 between Lukashenko and US presidential envoy Keith Kellogg.

Belarus’s opposition movement marked a rare victory over the weekend after a total of 14 political prisoners were unexpectedly freed following Kellogg’s meeting with Lukashenko. However, Tikhanovskaya immediately pointed out that another 1,150 political prisoners remain in jail, including her friend and fellow running mate Maria Kolesnikova who has been sentenced to years in prison on charges of trying to organise a coup d'état.

The prisoners, including foreign nationals and a journalist working for the US-backed RFE/RL, were immediately flown to Lithuania to be reunited with their loved ones after five years in prison.

Tikhanovskaya, reunited with her husband in Vilnius, later shared a video of their emotional reunion on social media. “Siarhei is free. He’s with me and the children,” she wrote. “The thing our family dreamed about for five years and that we all worked for since the moment of his arrest has happened. Siarhei’s release is a step towards the release of all political prisoners and all of Belarus. We thank everyone for the colossal support.”

Among the others freed were journalist Ihar Karnei, academic Natallia Dulina, activist Akikhiro Hayeuski-Hanada, businessman Siarhei Sheleh, and Belarusian-Swedish national Halina Krasnianskay. Dzianis Kuchynski, an advisor to Tikhanovskaya, confirmed that eight foreign nationals were among those released, including citizens of Poland, Japan, Estonia, and Latvia.

US envoy Keith Kellogg's visit to Minsk was reportedly encouraged by US President Donald Trump. In a video statement, Kellogg’s aide John Coale said, “We got 14 people from different countries [who] are now free. The United States is now strong, so we can get these kinds of things done.” Coale described the handover of prisoners as taking place on a “back road”, recalling: “They didn’t know what was going on, and I said, ‘You’re free! You’re free!’... When they heard they were free, they were ecstatic,” Meduza reports.

Lukashenko’s spokesperson Natalya Eismont later confirmed the release was carried out “at Trump’s request” and framed the decision as a humanitarian gesture to reunite Tikhanovsky with his family.

Tikhanovsky gained prominence in 2019 as his popular YouTube channel “Country for Life” made him a key challenger to Lukashenko in the 2020 presidential election race. Barred from running, his wife entered the race in his place. Tikhanovsky was arrested later that year before the poll and sentenced in 2021 to 18 years in prison. He was held incommunicado from March 2023, according to his wife.

Lukashenko stood for re-election in January and was shooed in for his seventh term in office without opposition and without protests.

The campaign continues

Tikhanovsky, together with jailed former banker Viktor Babariko, had a good chance of winning the election if the competition was fair, but since then Tikhanovskaya has emerged as a major political force on the European stage and the face of Belarus’ resistance to Lukashenko. She has travelled tirelessly lobbying the international community to increase pressure on the Lukashenko regime and heads up the Coordination Committee, the de facto government in exile. While the results of the 2020 elections were massively falsified, results released by the few rebel polling stations suggest that Tikhanovskaya won the 2020 election by a landslide.

Speaking at a press conference in Vilnius, Tikhanovsky said he had no intention of challenging his wife’s leadership of the opposition movement: “I’m not going to lay claim to anything here. A person who spent five years in isolation can’t be the leader. We have thousands of leaders like me.”

The couple called for continued international pressure to secure the release of those still detained. “President Trump now has the power and opportunity to free all political prisoners in Belarus with a single word. And I ask him to do this, to say the word,” Tikhanovsky said.

The release follows a broader pattern of amnesties under Lukashenko. In January, the president’s office claimed 293 people were pardoned in the past year. A further 42 were released in May. The Belarusian human rights organisation Viasna estimates that 1,174 political prisoners remain in detention, Meduza reports.

“I can see what prison did to Siarhei. The weight he lost — the pain. But I also see the fire in his eyes,” Tikhanovskaya wrote on social media. “He didn’t ask for rest today — he wants to continue the fight. That’s how I know him. And that’s why we keep going. For everyone still behind bars. For a free Belarus.”

Divisions over political prisoner issue

The Belarusian opposition in exile has been buoyed by the release of Tikhanovsky, but after five years of struggle the members have become frustrated and somewhat disillusioned by the lack of progress.

The war in Ukraine has overshadowed their fight and distracted the EU leadership from the repression in Minsk. An argument has also broken out amongst the opposition leadership over what are the best tactics to adopt. Tikhanovskaya has stuck to her policy of lobbying the West for pressure on Lukashenko to declare a general amnesty for all the incarcerated political prisoners, whereas others believe more effective would be a case-by-case approach to get small groups released – similar to how Tikhanovsky was just released.

The case-by-case approach came to the fore following a historic prisoner swap was completed on August 1 where Russia traded several leading political prisoners, including US Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich, for Russian prisoners held in western jails. Lukashenko participated in that deal, releasing a German national Rico Krieger, who had been sentenced to death in Belarus for spying, but pardoned by Lukashenko on July 30 just ahead of the swap.

A significant leadership struggle amongst the opposition in exile has been brewing, as a faction led by former Coordination Council (CC) speaker Andrey Yahorau challenged the authority of Tikhanovskaya. However, given Tikhanovskaya’s public profile on the international stage, for the meantime she remains unassailable and the release of her husband will likely only re-energise her campaign and bolster her prestige within the international community.