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Sergei Tikhonovsky has hardly talked for more than five years.
All this time, he was held in solitary confinement in the high security of the Belarusian prison for daring to resist the dictator.
Now the former opposition blogger is free, and the words flow from it so quickly that his thoughts sometimes fight for keeping up.
“The conversation restriction was the most difficult,” Sergei trusted when we met in Vilnius very soon after his unexpected release.
“If you can’t say anything or write, you can’t talk to anyone, and you just get into the cell – this is the most difficult thing – not a movement restriction.”
Sergei is now in compulsory exile released with 13 other political prisoners after the US senior delegation paid a rare visit to the authoritarian leader of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko.
When I ask about reunion with my family, Sergei raises his hand to face and crying.
His daughter was only four when he was arrested.
“She didn’t recognize me,” he eventually runs me after a long pause. “Then she rushed into my hands and we hugged for a long time.”
Sergei’s transformation after the arrest is shockingly.
Back in 2020, he was chunky and bearded. Now the face under his close shaved head-naughty. He says he lost almost 60 kg (132 pounds) in prison, where he spent endless weeks in punishment.
“Physically I am half the size and half of the weight,” Sergei says. “But my spirit is not broken. Perhaps it’s even stronger.”
“Before I only heard about the crimes of this regime, but now I saw them firsthand and we must fight it.”
Until last week, Sergei Tikhonovsky was one of the most famous political prisoners of Belarus.
On the eve of the 2020 presidential election, he developed a great YouTube, shooting open interviews about people’s complaints and problems.
Then he tried to register to run himself by waving a giant slipper and calling Belarusians to “stop cockroaches!”.
“I used a chance to show that it is impossible to win democratically in Belarus,” Sergei explains. “I wanted to show that the elections were fake and they arrested me.”
When his wife is Svetlana Tikhonovskaya, she continued to run in her place, she attracted a huge crowd of people. After Lukashenko stated that another implausible victory, these crowds became a mass protest, which soon became mass arrests.
In prison, Sergei was constantly standing out for poor treatment, as well as other loud figures-“those who, in their opinion, are most dangerous or whom they want to destroy” as he expresses.
“For the last two and a half years I have been in full isolation. I haven’t received a single letter for almost three years. Almost three years they have not allowed me to call,” he says.
He was not even allowed to see the priest.
“They said, You will die in prison. We will continue your time and you won’t come out.”
Worse, Sergei was often sent to punishment – for a sign on a wall or a web.
“These cells can be three or two meters, including a toilet floor,” he recalls. “Neither mattress nor sheets nor pillows.”
He would get up every hour later to warm up with sets of squats and seat, and then lie on a wooden hole until his hands and legs took advantage, and he had to start everything again.
To handle, he had to cleanse the brain of all the thoughts of family and friends.
“You have to put it one way,” he says. “Because when you think about how they are and what happens to them, you will not survive.”
It was in August last year when Sergei started thinking he could come out.
It was then that the deputy prosecutor began touring in prisons and “seriously recommended” that political detainees “write a dictator and asked for a pardon”, according to Sergei.
Lukashenka suddenly wants to seek mercy and produced several dozen.
Sergei and other great names, such as Victor Babarik and Maria Kolesonikov, have never been on any lists.
But he never entertained the idea of ​​confessing, even to return to his children.
“I’m not a criminal,” he explains. “So, it would be a betrayal of everyone who supports me.”
Then the US entered last week.
When a special Messenger Keith Kealo went to Minsk to intercede US citizens in prison, he also appeared with Sergei.
For Lukashenko, the meeting with Kellog became a great victory diplomatically.
It has been dismissed from Western countries since it submitted peaceful protests in 2020.
His active support for Russia in the captured Ukraine further nominated it.
“Now Lukashenko can show that some cooperation has begun, a dialogue with the US,” Sergei says, explaining that Lukashenko received some prisoners for release.
“It was the price: the start of contact with it. Because no one was engaged.”
Sergei also does not want to release all the other political prisoners. There is more than 1000 in total.
In tears, he recently describes a meeting with an “old man” who was a young friend who is out of date.
“I would give something to pull them out,” Sergei says. “I think we have to pay any price. But I don’t want them to throw all the sanctions.”
Sergei’s wife, now the opposition leader, is glad to bring him back to her and their children. But Svetlana tells me that I am alert to the next US movement.
“We cannot mitigate the sanctions until the repression is completely stopped,” she claims. “For 14 people who released 28 more were detained in Belarus. There is no change in politics for Lukashenko.”
The first week of freedom Sergei was held in a whirlwind. He met politicians, made speeches and wrote Donald Trump with his thanks. He also caught up with the lost time with his children – as well as all the news he missed in isolation.
But what about his ambitions? The last time he and Svetlana were together, she was a housewife and he was political. So can there be tensions?
“I have no claim to her role,” Sergei insists. “I don’t need it. I just need a democratic Belarus.”