When Belarusian opposition figure Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya declared herself “President” of an alternative government in 2020, she was enthusiastically embraced – and showered with funding – by the Western governments which yearned to depose the longtime leader of her country, Alexander Lukashenko, and remove Russia’s closest regional ally from the geopolitical chessboard. The New York Times set the tone by lionizing Tsikhanouskaya as a modern-day Joan of Arc. However, a wave of...


















