president weAnd Joe BidenAnd on Wednesday the twelfth he met with the Chief of the Opposition Belarus in exile, Svetlana Tikhanovskayain Vilnius, the place NATO summit Primarily devoted to The struggle in UkraineReport back to the White Home.
Within the 2020 presidential election — the outcomes of that are in dispute — Tikhanovskaya, whose husband is imprisoned in Belarus, has change into the principle opponent in her nation, which is dominated by an iron-fisted dictator. Alexander Lukashenko Since 1994.
Like hundreds of her compatriots, she was compelled into displacement after the elections to flee repression from the authorities.
The White Home stated in a press release that in the course of the assembly, Biden expressed “america’ continued dedication to defending and advancing human rights, together with freedom of expression and free and truthful elections in Belarus.”
The assembly got here after Lukashenko performed the function of mediator final month between the Russian president Russian President Vladimir Putin that it The top of the Russian paramilitary Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhinto succeed in an settlement that places an finish to the paramilitary rise up in Russia.
A number of days in the past, Tikhanovskaya warned that her husband, Sergey TikanovskyHe might need died in jail.
The opposition chief’s husband was sentenced in December 2021 to 18 years in jail, a sentence some noticed as political revenge for his defiance of Lukashenko.
Biden additionally met with the prime minister LithuaniaIngrida Simonetti, with whom he careworn the “robust bilateral relationship” between the 2 international locations.
The US President arrived on Wednesday night at Finland, a NATO member since April, is on a 24-hour go to. There he’ll finish his European tour, which took him earlier than Vilnius to London.