The interview is published ahead of a trip to the Alps where she will try to persuade the authorities to freeze assets belonging to the authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko.
Opposition front figure
Svetlana Tichanovskaya's husband Sergei Tichanovsky is one of the country's imprisoned opposition politicians.
She has emerged as the opposition's front figure in the protests against the regime and the highly questioned election result in August, which gave Lukashenko a sixth term.
"They have the power"
But the increasingly harsh police interventions have paid off and hope is falling for the opposition.
- They have the weapons, they have the power, so yes, at the moment it looks like we have lost, says Svetlana Tichanovskaya to Le Temps.
- The return to democracy will take longer than planned, she concludes.