“I’ve never met anyone as pure of heart as Sviatlana. I can’t hold a candle to her,” Siarhei Tsikhanouski said in 2025. “Now it’s going to hurt even more, Sviatlana Hieorhiyeuna,” he says in 2026. Both remarks concern his wife, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the leader of Belarus’ democratic forces. Less than a year and a half separates them. During that time, Siarhei has tried to regain influence in Belarusian opposition politics, where Sviatlana and her Office now play the leading role. So far, he has been unsuccessful: His livestreams criticizing his wife are all that draw much attention.

Since 2020, Sviatlana has gone from homemaker to opposition leader. Siarhei missed his wife’s political rise — he was in prison

Siarhei Tsikhanouski was detained in May 2020, a couple of months before the presidential election in which Sviatlana ran in his place, and was not released until June 2025. At his very first press conference, he said the Belarusian authorities hoped he would “make a grab for control” and break up the opposition. That would not happen, Tsikhanouski promised. He would neither challenge his wife’s political authority nor interfere in the work of her Office. Instead, he would reestablish himself as an independent politician: “I’m a force in my own right. I am my own fire.”

Siarhei, however, was unprepared for a shift in public sentiment: Over his five years of enforced isolation, Belarusians who had endured repression and emigration had grown considerably more cautious toward politicians. Immediately after his release, he launched a campaign to raise 200,000 euros for “a powerful blow against Lukashism in three weeks” — and was disappointed when he fell short. At first, Siarhei “was rather, maybe, disappointed that Belarusians are not so active as in 2020. It took him so long, you know, hours of explaining and conversations why the situation is different now,” Sviatlana said in an interview with Times Radio.

Siarhei was also unprepared for Sviatlana’s new inner circle. He quickly fell out with his wife’s advisers, saying they disregarded him. Two episodes in this dispute became public in the fall of 2025. The first came when the Tsikhanouskis were in New York, and Siarhei would not let Sviatlana do a CNN interview her team had arranged. The second came when Siarhei received the Magnitsky Award but did not attend the ceremony, allegedly because Tsikhanouskaya’s Office had not helped him obtain a visa. In both instances, however, Siarhei ended on a conciliatory note, saying he respected and loved his wife.

Tsikhanouski has lived in America for almost a year but has little to show for it

Siarhei has repeatedly thanked U.S. President Donald Trump for his release from prison: Belarusian authorities began freeing leaders of the country’s 2020 protests, including Siarhei, after the Trump administration opened direct talks with Alexander Lukashenko.

Tsikhanouski was grateful to Trump and liked his politics — he even called himself a Trumpist, his former press secretary Sergei Bespalov said in 2025. According to Bespalov, Tsikhanouski was convinced that the United States was where “all the power” was and decided to go there when an opportunity arose. Vadim Prokopyev, a Belarusian businessman, activist, and critic of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, arranged the trip. “Prokopyev paid for his tickets to America, gave him about $5,000, and Seryoga thought, ‘Well, great,’” said Bespalov, who by then had fallen out with Tsikhanouski.

Prokopyev said he and Tsikhanouski worked together in the United States “like a rally driver and navigator.” He believed Siarhei’s charisma and personal story gave him every chance of becoming a recognizable figure in Washington. Prokopyev’s plan called for Tsikhanouski to develop his own political vision, improve his English, and enroll in an American university to “polish his manners.” “Perhaps too ambitious a task for someone who’s spent five years in solitary confinement,” Prokopyev wrote in a recent column.

Tsikhanouski spoke to American audiences several times, proposed the “Finlandization” of Belarus, and said he no longer wanted to be a blogger and wanted to enroll in a university instead. But the “driver and navigator” partnership appears to have eventually broken up. In the summer of 2026, Siarhei returned to blogging. Prokopyev called it a return to his “comfort zone”: “I think that’s a low bar, but I respect his choice.”

Tsikhanouski is in no hurry to leave the United States. He is now in Los Angeles, while his wife and children are in Warsaw. Siarhei had the children stay with him for several months in 2026, but they then returned to their mother. Tsikhanouski says YouTube advertising revenue dating back to 2020 and help from the Belarusian diaspora allow him to live in the United States.

After returning to social media, Tsikhanouski picked a fight with the newspaper Nasha Niva. Gradually, he drew his wife’s Office and Sviatlana herself into the dispute

In August, Nasha Niva, one of Belarus’ largest independent publications, reported that Tsikhanouski had celebrated his birthday “in grand style” in Los Angeles. He responded that the newspaper was using Western grants to spread lies and gossip — and threatened to complain to its funders.

The dispute escalated: Nasha Niva reported on Tsikhanouski’s latest statements, he responded with more videos, and those prompted further articles in Nasha Niva and other publications that Siarhei also began taking issue with. Alongside his attacks on journalists, he began criticizing Sviatlana’s Office, alleging that it influenced Belarusian media. He also criticized Sviatlana herself, alleging that she had treated him unfairly.

In September, Sviatlana published a column about rehabilitation for their son, who was born with a hearing impairment. Tsikhanouski was hurt that the piece never mentioned his name, even though he had supported the family and paid for the rehabilitation. He said he was certain that Sviatlana’s Office had written the column — and that it was part of an effort to erase his role in the family and in history.

In October, Siarhei held a series of livestreams on Strana dlya Zhizni, the YouTube channel that had once made him popular. This time, he was exposing his wife and her team rather than Lukashenko. He called Sviatlana a “stand-in candidate” in the 2020 election, said she should have stayed in Belarus after the vote even at the risk of prison, and said she no longer had legitimacy among Belarusians. To remedy this, Siarhei proposed creating a United Office of Democratic Forces that would include him and Sviatlana, as well as other leaders of the opposition and the 2020 protests. Under his proposal, an election for the Office’s leader would be held every year.

In his livestreams, Siarhei challenged his wife’s political standing and criticized her personally. He accused Sviatlana of failing to defend him in his dispute with the media and of failing to help him get his teeth fixed after his release from prison. “Of course you [in Tsikhanouskaya’s Office] talked [about political prisoners], nobody’s arguing with that! You put photos on folders and asked for money! But you used it to get grants — for the Office, for your own salaries, and for helping political prisoners, too. But there wasn’t even enough money to get your own husband’s teeth fixed!” Tsikhanouski complained.

For a long time, Sviatlana declined to comment on his statements. She responded only after he shifted from attacking the Office to attacking her. In early November, Tsikhanouskaya told DW that she did not support “Siarhei’s demeaning way of communicating” and that his new rhetoric surprised and hurt her: “This situation is hard for me. I realize I’ve stayed silent for too long, and people are waiting for some answers. But this isn’t easy for me. The person criticizing me is still my husband, whatever our relationship may be. He’s the father of my children, and it’s very hard for me to separate one thing from the other.”

After his wife’s response, Tsikhanouski promised to step things up even further. “She says it hurts her to hear this. Now it’s going to hurt even more when I tell people how you really treated me, Sviatlana Hieorhiyeuna — how you didn’t have my back, you tripped me up, how you spat at my back and in my face,” Nasha Niva quoted him as saying in another livestream.

The Tsikhanouskis try to avoid discussing how their public disagreements affect their family relationships. In October, journalists noticed that Sviatlana had begun appearing without her wedding ring. She did not explain why. Siarhei declined to answer whether they were still married.