Belarus: Kolesnikova jailed to leave hospital on Monday That’s what we know about the terror letter against Ukraine and its supporters

Belarusian opposition activist Maria Kolesnikova, sentenced to a long prison term, will be released from hospital on Monday after being treated in intensive care. The Belarusian opposition announced this on Friday, citing her father Alexander Kolesnikov, who had met with the doctor of the political prisoners. Maria had breakfast and felt normal, Kolesnikov said. It was still unclear why the country’s most prominent prisoner had to be treated in intensive care.

Opponents of ruler Alexander Lukashenko complained that the lawyer still had no access to Kolesnikova and that there was no reliable information about her condition. She was supposed to have surgery this week. The father saw only the doctors, but not his daughter himself. Kolesnikova had previously been placed in solitary confinement as punishment. A judge had rejected a complaint against the particularly harsh solitary confinement.

Kolesnikova, together with opposition leader Svetlana Tichanovskaya, who lives in exile in the EU country of Lithuania, is considered a figurehead of the Belarusian opposition to Lukashenko. The two led nationwide protests in 2020 against the disputed presidential election in which Lukashenko proclaimed himself the winner. He ordered the police and judiciary to crack down on demonstrators.

Kolesnikova was arrested in the summer of 2020 and sentenced to 11 years in prison for subversion conspiracy. The trial, like that against Lukashenko’s other opponents, was regarded as a political staging. (saw/sda/dpa)