Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya arrived in Kyiv on May 25, the exiled Belarusian opposition leader’s first trip to Ukraine more than four years into the all-out Russian invasion.Ahead of meeting with top Ukrainian officials, Tsikhanouskaya laid flowers at the Kyiv grave of Maria Zaytsava, a Belarusian woman who participated in anti-government protests in Minsk and was killed while fighting for Ukraine in 2025.
The trip comes as tensions are ratcheting up between Kyiv and Minsk. Ukraine recently ordered heightened security measures in northern regions bordering Belarus, and Ukrainian and European officials have been concerned over a major Russian-Belarusian nuclear training exercise that just concluded.“I am going to Ukraine with the question of how we, as Belarusians, as a society, can help Ukraine. We all understand that the results of the war will greatly affect the situation in Belarus,” she told RFE/RL in an interview ahead of the trip.“If Ukraine wins, it will be the greatest opportunity for Belarusians inside the country to liberate Belarus,” she said during the interview in Prague. “Because, of course, our fate largely depends on the fate of Ukraine, and all Belarusians want to live well, want to live without dictatorship, want to live freely,”Tsikhanouskaya arrived as the Ukrainian capital cleaned up after a major Russian drone-and-missile attack a day earlier. The attack was one of the worst on the Ukrainian capital in recent memory.
