Belarusian presidential aspirant Svetlana Tikhanovskaya in a video on Tuesday that she had left her country for Lithuania.
“I made a very complicated decision,” said a distressed-looking Tikhanovskaya in a short speech broadcast through tut.through, a Belarusian media outlet.
He said he had left Belarus to be with his two sons, who in the past had been taken from the former Soviet authoritarian country for their own safety. “Children are the most vital thing we have in life,” the 37-year-old said.
“You know, I think this crusade strengthened me and gave me the strength to put up with it all,” he said. “But I was probably still the weak woman I was at first.”
President Alexander Lukashenko had in the past despised political women, saying that a president would “collapse, which is a deficient thing.”
“I know that many will perceive me, many will judge me and many will begin to hate me,” Tikhanovskaya said. “But God forbids anyone from facing the selection I had.”
“People take care of you,” he added. “What happens now is to value a single life.”
On Monday, Tikhanovskaya claimed victory over authoritarian Lukashenko in Sunday’s vote and suggested that the 65-year-old strongman surrender the force peacefully.
She would run for president after the government imprisoned her husband, the popular blogger Sergei Tikhanovsky, and banned her from running.
His crusade galvanized the opposition, presenting a historic challenge for former head of the collective farm Lukashenko, who has had Belarus since 1994, without tolerance to dissent and earning himself the nickname “Europe’s last dictator”.
Many Belarusians claim that Lukashenko stole the elections in Tikhanovskaya and that thousands more people took to the streets of the capital Minsk and other cities on Sunday and Monday. Dozens of people were injured and police said one man was killed during protests Monday night.
President Gitanas Nauseda’s workplace said Tikhanovskaya “resting” in the Baltic state.
“The president is in constant contact with Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who arrived in Lithuania. He’s resting lately,” Nauseda spokeswoman Antanas Bubnelis told the AFP.
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius told the AFP on Tuesday that Tikhanovskaya had “arrived in Lithuania and was safe.”
Tikhanovskaya’s house in Minsk on Monday night is not known.
Lithuania, a member of the EU and NATO, which was also once a component of the Soviet Union, has granted refuge to the figures of the Belarusian and Russian opposition.
Poland’s foreign minister said Tuesday that his country is in a position to arbitrate the dispute between Tikhanovskaya and Lukashenko.