The Lithuanian government announced on Oct. 7 that it is decreasing the level of personal protection for Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, an exiled Belarusian opposition leader residing in the country.
The security of Tsikhanouskaya, who was forced out of Belarus in the wake of the rigged 2020 presidential election, will now be ensured by the Criminal Police Bureau instead of the Dignitary Protection Service (VAT).
VAT is responsible for the personal security of top dignitaries like Lithuania’s president, prime minister, and parliament speaker.
Lithuanian authorities emphasized that Tsikhanouskaya remains an official guest of the state and that Vilnius’s stance toward the Belarusian regime led by Alexander Lukashenko remains unchanged.
The Baltic country’s prime minister, Inga Ruginiene, said the decision was made based on the existing level of threat.
“The services are doing their job well; every day they assess the level of threats and, based on that, determine what kind of protection should be applied,” Ruginiene told journalists on Oct. 8, according to LRT broadcaster.
“Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya has security, but it is adjusted to reflect today’s realities.”
Dzianis Kuchynski, Tsikhanouskaya’s adviser, told LRT that the oppositionist’s team learned about the decision only on Oct. 1, giving them little time to prepare and even forcing a temporary suspension of their office’s activities.
“We would have preferred the decision to be announced a bit in advance. Since the notice period was very short, we did not have enough time to adapt the office’s work to these changes,” Kuchynski said.
“As a result, we had to temporarily suspend the office’s operations.”
The step has sparked criticism in a country that has long supported the Belarusian opposition in exile and warned about the security threat posed by Lukashenko’s regime and its ally, Russia.
Gabrielius Landsbergis, Lithuania’s foreign minister between 2020 and 2024, said the move amounts to a betrayal.
“(Sviatlana) Tsikhanouskaya has been a symbol of the fight against tyranny and against the enormous odds that are stacked against democracies,” Landsbergis wrote in a column on his website.
In 2020, Tsikhanouskaya ran against Lukashenko in the presidential election after her husband, Siarhei Tsikhanouski, was arrested. Despite Tsikhanouskaya receiving popular support, the regime overturned the election through massive vote rigging.
The opposition activist was forced to flee following a crackdown against her supporters, later establishing the United Transitional Cabinet in Vilnius as Belarus’s government-in-exile.
The news follows another controversy linked to the Lithuanian government.
Then-Culture Minister Ignotas Adomavicius, from the populist Dawn of Nemunas party, was forced to resign last week after public backlash partially connected to his dodging a question about Vilnius’s support for Ukraine and the status of Russian-occupied Crimea.
Lithuania, a NATO member bordering Belarus and Russia’s heavily armed exclave of Kaliningrad, has been one of Ukraine’s staunchest supporters since the outbreak of the full-scale war in 2022.
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