Zelensky meets Tsikhanouskaya in Kyiv on exiled Belarusian leader's first official visit

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky held a meeting with exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya in Kyiv, the Kyiv Independent reported, marking her first official visit to the Ukrainian capital.

Tsikhanouskaya, who has led the Belarusian democratic opposition from exile since the disputed 2020 presidential election, has long called for international solidarity against the government of President Alexander Lukashenko. Lukashenko's administration has remained one of Moscow's closest allies and allowed Russian forces to use Belarusian territory as a staging ground for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The visit brings together the leader of a country actively at war with Russia and an opposition figure whose movement directly challenges a government deeply intertwined with the Kremlin's war effort. The symbolic weight of holding the meeting in Kyiv itself underscores the shared geopolitical stakes for both Ukraine and the Belarusian democratic opposition.

No formal agenda, joint statement, or specific outcomes from the meeting were included in the initial report by the Kyiv Independent.