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Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Cichanouskaya arrived in Berlin to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, urging protesters to continue fighting against authoritarian Belarusian leader Aliaksandr Lukashenko.
“Our struggle has united the Belarusians not only in our homeland, but throughout the world,” Cichanouskaya told several dozen protesters with red and white flags in the German capital on Monday night.
Cichanouskaya, who declared victory in the controversial August 9 elections, soon left her country under pressure and is attempting to mobilize international pressure on the Minsk regime as protests continue in the streets of Belarus.
S. Cichanouskaja met with French President Emmanuel Macron in Lithuania last week, and will meet with Merkel on Tuesday.
“We will talk about the situation in Belarus and I think the two women will always know what to talk about,” Cichanouskaya told AFP.
Merkel, whose country holds the presidency of the European Union this semester, has said that Germany does not recognize Lukashenko as the winner of the presidential elections and has condemned her government’s violence against protesters.
“Today I learned that Belarusians in Berlin and other German cities hardly knew each other before,” Cichanouskaya told protesters.
“But this summer, Belarus and the Belarusians have come together,” he said. – We don’t know how long this fight will last, but we need your help. The government has not listened to us for 26 years and it is not listening to us now. “
The United States and the European Union on Friday announced long-awaited sanctions against Belarusian officials, to which Minsk and its ally Moscow reacted angrily.
Meetings
Merkel will accept the former candidate in the Belarusian presidential elections as “the most important figure in the Belarusian opposition,” Chancellor Steffen Seibert said on Monday. He said that he could not comment in advance on what would be discussed at the meeting between Mr. Cichanouskaya and Mr. Merkel.
Earlier, in an interview with the German weekly Der Spiegel, S. Cichanouskaya said that he planned to discuss the prospects for mediation in Berlin if negotiations between the Belarusian authorities and the opposition began.
The German Foreign Ministry, for its part, announced that Cichanouskaya will meet with the country’s head of diplomacy, Heiko Maas, on Wednesday morning.
In addition, meetings of the Belarusian opposition leader with representatives of the main German parties are planned.
Cichanouskaja will leave Germany for Slovakia to attend the annual Globsec Bratislava Forum international security conference, his representatives said.
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