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Meduza profiled Siarhei Tsikhanouski, a businessman and blogger who sparked Belarus's 2020 protests and has turned from praising his wife, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the leader of Belarus's democratic forces, to openly criticizing her. In 2020 the Central Election Commission refused to register him, so his wife ran in his place. He was detained in May 2020 and released in June 2025. Officially she received 10% of the vote, but Meduza wrote that there are grounds to believe she was the actual winner, and she was forced into Lithuania the day after the vote, where she became the opposition leader. After his release Siarhei promised not to challenge her authority, but he quickly fell out with her advisers and failed to reach his fundraising goal of 200,000 euros. He thanked U.S. President Donald Trump for his release, and Vadim Prokopyev, a critic of Sviatlana, helped arrange his trip to the United States, according to his former press secretary. Meduza reported that the partnership with Prokopyev appears to have broken up, and in summer 2026 Siarhei returned to blogging. He now lives in Los Angeles while his wife and children are in Warsaw. His livestreams criticizing her are, Meduza reported, the only things that draw much attention to his efforts to regain influence in opposition politics.