Leaks Expose Collapse Of EU/US-Backed Belarusian ‘Opposition’
When Belarusian opposition figure Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya declared herself “President” of an alternative government in 2020, she was enthusiastically embraced – and showered with funding – by the Western governments which yearned to depose the longtime leader of her country, Alexander Lukashenko, and remove Russia’s closest regional ally from the geopolitical chessboard. The New York Times set the tone by lionizing Tsikhanouskaya as a modern-day Joan of Arc.
However, a wave of public scandals have prompted Tsikhanouskaya’s foreign sponsors to gradually abandon her unpopular crusade to topple the government of Lukashenko. In August, it was revealed she had secretly taken thousands of euros from Minsk’s KGB in August 2020, a payoff for publicly pleading with protesters to stop their action in the streets, before she fled the country.