Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Saker.

My guest today has spent the last 18 months in political exile,

attempting to rally international support for the opposition to dictatorship in her home country, Belarus.

Svetlana Tikunovskaya stood against Alexander Lukashenko,

Belarus's veteran authoritarian president,

in the election of August 2020. She claims she won, but she was denied by systematic vote rigging. In the wave of popular protests that followed, she was forced to flee the country with her two

children. Many of her supporters,

including her own activist husband, were locked up. Lukashenko appeared to have weathered the storm,

and then Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. Moscow tightened its already vice-like grip on Belarus.

After a prolonged joint military exercise,

30,000 Russian troops used Belarus as their launch pad for the push into northern Ukraine

towards Kiev. Lukashenko not only backed the invasion, he held a referendum,

a result of which was never in doubt, reversing his country's commitment to be

nuclear weapons free. The implication was clear. Moscow could, if it wished, put nukes in Belarus on

NATO's doorstep. The Ukraine war has inevitably raised new questions about Belarus's future. So what does it mean for the country's

anti-Lukashenko opposition? Is Belarus's fate now tied to that of Ukraine? While Svetlana

Tickenovskaya joins me now, welcome to hard talk. Hello. It's nice to have you in our studio. Tell me,

what are your feelings as you see your country, Belarus,

being used as a launch pad for Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine?

On the 24th of February, we woke up in neutrality,

and we understood that Lukashenko gave our land as a aircraft career

for Putin's troops to invade Ukraine. We were shocked. Nobody believed that the war could start

...