Exiled from Belarus, the opponent of Alexander Lukashenko, Svetlana Tikhanovskaïa, refuses Western as much as Russian interference. But his position is extremely delicate, as the protest against the Belarusian president enters its third week.

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The protest movement against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has entered its third week. Its first opponent, Svetlana Tikhanovskaïa, continues to lead the mobilization from abroad. "A peaceful revolution is underway in Belarus," she told the European Parliament on Tuesday. But the position of this professional translator and teacher is not simple, stuck as it is between the European Union and Russia.

"We only want to be sovereign"

It is even a balancing act that Svetlana Tikhanovskaïa must take on: on the one hand, she needs Europe, but above all she cannot attract the wrath of Moscow. The leader of the protest insists on one thing: she does not want her country to become a geopolitical issue and the theater of a standoff between Russia and the European Union.

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The stake, for his movement, is therefore not to transform Belarus into Ukraine, torn between two antagonistic powers. "We only want to be sovereign, we don't want the support of Europe any more than that of Russia," proclaims Katerina, a Belarusian exile in Vilnius, in neighboring Lithuania. "We want to be out of it all and prove that we have our own nation. Then we can act on the international stage."

Tikhanovskaya refuses "interference"

Svetlana Tikhanovskaïa nonetheless calls on Europe for help on specific ground. "She asks that we put political pressure on the power in place in relation to political prisoners," explains Stéphane Séjourné, Macronist MEP whom the Belarusian opponent met on Monday. "But no political interference, that is the limit she has repeatedly recalled. It is not for the United States, the European Union or Russia to decide who is going to be president instead. of current power. That's what non-interference means. "

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya is doing the exact opposite of what Alexander Lukashenko is trying. The Belarusian president is trying to discredit the protest by presenting the movement as a Western plot intended to ruin relations with Moscow.