Germany will host two of the 123 Belarusian opponents dismissed by the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, Maria Kolesnikova and Viktor Babariko, German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrint announced on Sunday (December 14, 2025) on the first German public television channel ARD.
“We have great interest in this democratic movement, even if it now needs to develop and be strengthened outside of Belarus, and that is why today we will host two of the most prominent opposition politicians who were in prison,” Dobrint said.
Maria Kolesnikova is considered “the heart” of the massive, violently suppressed protests against electoral fraud in August 2020, while Babariko is a well-known banker who was jailed before registering his presidential candidacy in the elections in which Lukashenko won another mandate.
According to the Belarusian regime, Lukashenko was re-elected with more than 80% of the vote, but the elections were viewed as fraudulent by the opposition and the West.
Kolesnikova, a Sakharov Prize winner for freedom of conscience from the European Parliament and Belarus’ democratic opposition, was a close ally of exiled opposition leader Svetlana Tijanóvskaya during the election campaign and massive anti-government protests last year.
She was arrested and imprisoned after she refused to be deported from the country by the KGB and tore up her passport. She was sentenced to 11 years in prison on charges of founding and leading an extremist organization and plotting an unconstitutional conspiracy to seize power.
She was Babariko’s campaign manager and was considered the most powerful candidate to defeat Lukashenko before her arrest and sentence to 14 years in prison for alleged bribery and money laundering.
The opponent was arrested while collecting signatures supporting his candidacy for the presidential election.
Hours before Saturday’s release of opponents, most of whom were transferred to Ukraine and some to Lithuania, such as 2022 Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski, the White House announced the lifting of sanctions against Belarusian potassium.
gs (efe, dpa)
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