Is it true that after his release from prison, opposition leader Sergei Tikhanovsky quarreled with his wife and leader of the Belarusian democratic forces Svetlana Tikhanovskaya on television because of his statement about leadership in the opposition? No, this is not true. The full version of the recording shows that there is no conflict between the spouses. Earlier, at a press conference in Vilnius on June 22, 2025, he also stated that his wife remains the leader of the Belarusian opposition.
This statement appeared in a video (archive here ) published on the social network TikTok on July 2, 2025. The credits say: "The Tikhanovskys quarreled on air. Seryozha explained why he should be the leader." In the video, Tikhanovsky says the following:
The thing is that I see myself, my further activity, in uniting Belarusians and leading them. I am precisely the fire, the engine, the locomotive.
This is what the TikTok video fragment looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok video screenshot, taken on July 8, 2025, at 10:46:18 UTC)
On July 8, 2025, Lead Stories conducted a reverse image search on Google and found that the fragment being distributed was taken from the broadcast (at the 09:02 mark) of the Vot Tak project , an online program of the Belsat TV channel , an independent Belarusian media outlet that is part of the Polish national media holding TVP (archive here ). The entire material was posted on their official YouTube channel on June 28, 2025. This was the first joint interview between the spouses after Siarhei Tikhanovsky's release from prison (archive here ). There is no conflict between Siarhei and Sviatlana during the entire broadcast. Moreover, the quote presented in the distributed video is part of Tikhanovsky's answer to the journalist's question:
Sergey, at a press conference in Lithuania you said that the leader of the opposition is your wife Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, and you are not going to claim anything. What is behind this decision, and how do you see your future?
Tikhanovsky replies:
Svetlana is the best fit for diplomatic work in our family. She is calmer, she speaks English well compared to me (...). The thing is that I see myself, my future work, in uniting Belarusians and leading them. I am the fire, the engine, the locomotive. Svetlana and her diplomatic work are different. This is very important. If it were not for her work, I would not be alive. If only I could be killed and without consequences, so that this would happen, I would no longer exist.
Also at a press conference in Vilnius on June 22, 2025, speaking about the future of the Belarusian opposition, Tikhanovsky emphasized that his wife remains its leader (archive here ). He said:
The leader of the opposition is my wife Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, and I am not going to lay claim to anything. Or do you think that someone who spent five years in prison becomes a leader? Well, we have 1,200 more people like that.
On July 8, 2025, Lead Stories conducted an additional search on Svetlana Tikhanovskaya's official website and Google News using the keywords: "Tikhanovsky AND Tikhanovskaya quarreled" and "Tikhanovskaya AND Tikhanovsky conflict" (archived here and here ). It also did not yield reliable results confirming the claim being spread.
On June 21, 2025, Tikhanovsky and 13 other political prisoners were released after a visit to Minsk by US President Donald Trump's special representative, Keith Kellogg, who came for talks with the authoritarian leader of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko (archive here ).
In 2019, Tikhanovsky created the YouTube channel "Country for Life" , where he criticized the Belarusian authorities. In 2020, he announced his intention to run for president of Belarus. He was denied registration (archive here ). Instead, Tikhanovskaya became a presidential candidate, and Sergei headed her initiative group (archive here ). In late May 2020, he was detained at a picket to collect signatures (archive here ). On August 14, 2020, the Belarusian Central Election Commission summed up the results of the presidential election and announced that Lukashenko had won it for the sixth time , with 80.1% of the vote (archive here ). However, many Belarusians and independent experts are confident that the results were falsified, and Tikhanovskaya won the election (archive here and here ). This provoked the largest protests in the history of independent Belarus (archive here ). Tikhanovskaya was forced to leave the country, and Tikhanovsky was subsequently sentenced to 18 years in prison and spent five years in prison (archive here , here and here ) . In July 2021 , Tikhanovskaya's office received diplomatic status in Lithuania (archive here ) .
