MOSCOW—Belarus’s growing protest movement is at a turning point after opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya left for Lithuania, saying she had to consider the future of her two children following the country’s disputed presidential elections and a worsening crackdown against her supporters.
Many of her backers have promised to continue demonstrations against Belarus’s veteran leader, President Alexander Lukashenko, who claimed 80% of the vote in Sunday’s poll despite growing anger over his handling of the country’s stagnating economy and his increasingly heavy-handed rule.
Some suggested Ms. Tikhanovskaya had been coerced into leaving the country and telling people on Tuesday to end the protests, pointing out that she only stepped into role of opposition candidate after husband, popular YouTuber Sergei Tikhanovsky, was barred after being detained in May for allegedly inciting unrest. He remains in detention.
Staff on Ms. Tikhanovskaya’s campaign team also released a statement later Tuesday supporting the protests that have been taking place in the Belarus capital Minsk and other cities. They urged authorities to avoid violence and instead begin discussions on what they called a peaceful transfer of power to the people.
But Ms. Tikhanovskaya’s role in the opposition movement appears to be over, potentially providing some respite for Mr. Lukashenko, 26 years after he first took control of this former Soviet republic.
“I made a very difficult decision for myself. I made this decision absolutely independently,” she said in an emotional video posted on social media Tuesday. She said not even her husband had influenced her.
Ms. Tikhanovskaya, 37 years old, didn’t reveal her whereabouts, but her campaign team confirmed she was in Lithuania, whose capital is a 112-mile drive across the border from the capital Minsk. The Lithuanian foreign minister also said Tuesday on Twitter that Ms. Tikhanovskaya was in the country. He provided no further details.
Mr. Lukashenko’s government didn’t respond to a request for comment on the departure of Ms. Tikhanovskaya and the continued protests against the president’s rule.
The election contest between Mr. Lukashenko and Ms. Tikhanovskaya was the hardest-fought vote in Belarus since the fall of the Iron Curtain and was closely watched by both Russia and the West, which have been competing for influence in Eastern Europe.
The U.S. and some European countries urged Belarus’s government to exercise restraint and criticized the conduct of the election, adding some weight to opposition allegations of election fraud. Russian President Vladimir Putin, in contrast, offered Mr. Lukashenko his congratulations and suggested the two countries work to build their already substantial economic and security ties.
Ms. Tikhanovskaya, a teacher by training, had promised radical changes if she won. She said she would release political prisoners and order a referendum on amending the constitution to cap the number of terms a president can serve. She had also pledged to give up the presidency after six months to hold a new election because she wasn’t interested in holding office.
“I don’t need this power. I don’t want this power. I want to be with my children and my husband and be among my family. That’s why I want this situation to end for me personally,” she said in an interview last week.
Photos: Police Clash With Protesters in Belarus
As exit polls from Belarus’s presidential election projected veteran leader Alexander Lukashenko to win, riot police clashed with protesters in the capital Minsk
A woman announced the names of the people who have placed in temporary detention since Sunday.
Natalia Fedosenko/tass/Zuma Press
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Despite her lack of experience, she succeeded in uniting the opposition behind her.
“I am very grateful to her for the tremendous work that she did,” said Anna Krasulina, who served as press secretary during Ms. Tikhanovskaya’s election campaign. “She simply raised and inspired the whole country. She was the banner people followed and they believed in their strength. The people of Belarus became a people who began to fight for their rights. And now we see this struggle.”
Since Sunday, thousands of people have taken to the streets to vent their frustration against Belarus’s leadership and what they say is a corrupted political system, prompting a ferocious response from security forces.
Many of the reported clashes were filmed and uploaded to social media. They showed police using stun grenades, rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse the demonstrators, but some protesters fought back, in some cases building barricades or throwing Molotov cocktails. At least one protester was killed and over 2,000 people were detained overnight Monday, authorities said. Twenty-one law-enforcement and military personnel were injured.
In a second video posted on Tuesday, Ms. Tikhanovskaya appealed to her supporters to keep off the streets and observe the law.
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya didn’t reveal her whereabouts, but her campaign confirmed that she was in Lithuania.
Photo:
Natalia Fedosenko/Tass/Zuma Press
“The people of Belarus have made their choice,” Ms. Tikhanovskaya said as she sat on a sofa, her eyes lowered reading a prepared text. “Belarusians, I am urging you to show wisdom and respect for the law. I don’t want any bloodshed or violence, so I’m asking you not to confront the police and not to gather on squares in order to not put your lives at risk,” she said.
There were fewer protesters on the streets of Minsk Tuesday compared with the previous evenings. A heavy police presence was visible in the center of the capital and in some districts police checked residence permits and other documents, according to video and photos posted on social media. Other footage showed clashes between riot police and groups of protesters in the city of Brest, in southwest Belarus. There were also reports of security officials confiscating flash drives from photographers.
Artyom Shraibman, founder of Minsk-based political consulting firm Sense Analytics, said the road forward for Belarus was unclear, but protests were likely to continue.
“I don’t know what the scale of them would be, how long they could sustain, and how much more brutality the authorities are ready to perform,” Mr. Shraibman said. “There is no disappointment about Svetlana, she was not perceived as a leader of the protest movement, more a symbol of hope. The protests are not about her, but about the authorities.”
Some opposition supporters are now calling for a general strike to pressure Mr. Lukashenko, 65, to step down. Again, many didn’t believe that Ms. Tikhanovskaya would ask them to give up unless she was under duress.
“She read from a piece of paper, with a red face, and her style of speech is usually different,” said Zakhar Yanovsky, a university student in Minsk. “It seems to me she was simply forced to record this appeal.”
Fears for Ms. Tikhanovskaya’s safety had grown in the run-up to Sunday’s election. She left her home to stay in an undisclosed location the night before the vote, appearing only to cast her ballot and make periodic statements.
In Tuesday’s video, she said she was faced with a difficult choice and acknowledged that many people might condemn her for choosing to leave.
“I thought that all this campaigning had toughened me very much and gave me so much strength that I could withstand everything,” she said in the video. “But, probably, I remained the weak woman I was originally.”
—Valentina Ochirova in Moscow contributed to this article.
Corrections & Amplifications
The last name of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya was misspelled in an earlier version of this article. (Corrected on Aug. 8)
Write to Ann M. Simmons at ann.simmons@wsj.com
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