Sergei Tikhanovsky

On 11 March 2021, the Investigative Committee completed its criminal case investigation against Tikhanovsky, accusing him of using his blog to advocate for the violent overthrow of the Belarusian government. He faced four criminal charges with a sentence of up to 15 years. His trial began in Minsk on 24 June and he was found guilty. In December 2021, Tikhanovsky was sentenced to 18 years in prison. Five supporters (including Ihar Losik and Mikola Statkevich) were jailed for 14 to 16 years. If he serves the full term, Tikhanovsky will be more than 60 years old at the time of his release.

Together with his team in a car with the logo "Real News", Tikhanovsky spent more than a month driving around Belarus and interviewing subscribers, who told him about the problems in the city and the country on camera. The most popular video on the channel (almost one million views as of 30 May 2020) is the story of a woman from the town of Hlybokaye about her life and her attitude toward Lukashenko. Tikhanovsky's YouTube channel also features video interviews with opposition politicians and businessmen. On trips around Belarus, Sergei Tikhanovsky was constantly followed by cars with people monitoring him, presumably employees of the Belarusian special services.

By May 2020, Tikhanovsky's YouTube channel had garnered 140,000 subscribers; by mid-July 2020, it had reached 243,000 subscribers, more than 12 times the number of subscribers to the state-run Belarus 24 satellite channel. Independent anti-Lukashenko bloggers (including Tikhanovsky) were seen by the government as a major threat to its rule, as a media alternative to television, newspapers, and radio, which are principally controlled by the Government, and many were targeted by the authorities.

On 9 May 2020, dozens of supporters of Sergei Tikhanovsky held an "Anti-parade" in Babruisk to express their disagreement with the Victory Day Parade in Minsk during the COVID-19 pandemic. The protest parade took the form of a protest motor rally. Police detained about 15 people after the motor rally. Sergei Tikhanovsky was detained at that moment.

On 29 May 2020, Sergei Tikhanovsky and at least eight other men were arrested in the city of Hrodna, in northwestern Belarus, while collecting signatures for Svetlana Tikhanovskaya's presidential candidacy, and charged with "organization or preparation for a grave breach of public order." Footage and witness accounts show that Tikhanovsky was detained following an incident after a woman aggressively followed and touched Tikhanovsky in an apparently deliberate attempted provocation; two police officers then "joined the woman in her pursuit of Sergei Tikhanovsky" and a scuffle with police ensued. According to the Viasna Human Rights Centre, at least 13 people were detained, including two members of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya's initiative group and three aides to Sergei Tikhanovsky. The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Belarus said that they had opened a criminal case for supposed "violence against police officers." Although Belarusian officials claimed that police were injured, there is no evidence in video footage of any injury.

In response to Sergei Tikhanovsky's detention on 29 May 2020, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya demanded the immediate release of her husband, condemning "the 'dirty' provocation" against him; declaring that "the picket was legal and peaceful in nature; and calling the arrest a politically motivated violation of her constitutional rights." Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have condemned the Belarusian authorities' arrests of Tikhanovsky and the broader crackdown by Belarusian authorities on opposition figures, journalists, and bloggers ahead of the 2020 presidential election, including arbitrary arrest and detention and pretextual criminal charges. Amnesty stated that "The arrest and prosecution of Sergei Tikhanovsky and others detained alongside him are arbitrary, unwarranted and politically motivated" and considers the group to be "prisoners of conscience, as they are detained solely for peacefully exercising their human rights."

On 29 September 2020, Tikhanovsky's personal Telegram account noted that his prison sentence in Zhodino had been extended by two more months. The decision was rendered without a hearing.

On 10 October 2020, Lukashenko spoke with the imprisoned Tikhanovsky and fellow candidate Viktar Babaryka in a four-hour meeting concerning changes to the Constitution. At this time, Tikhanovsky and Babaryka remain in custody.

In December 2020, Tikhanovsky was named among the representatives of the Democratic Belarusian opposition, honored with the Sakharov Prize by the European Parliament.

The YouTube channel "Country for Life" (Страна для жизни) was launched in 2019 and managed to attract 140,000 subscribers during the year. The channel is dedicated to stories of ordinary Belarusians and real cases of entrepreneurs "which will help to build a country for life". Tikhanovsky shoots a video on social and political topics and talks about the problems of people – mainly in the Belarusian regions.

After his arrest, Sergei Tikhanovsky was held at a temporary detention center in Homyel, nominally due to participation in the rally in Minsk on 19 December 2019 against the integration of Belarus with Russia. He was ultimately sentenced to 15 days' imprisonment: 15 days of arrest for "participating in an unauthorized protest action" in December 2019, and 30 days for meeting subscribers to his YouTube channel in Orsha and Brest. After his detention, Tikhanovsky announced on his YouTube channel that he intended to run for president of Belarus. However, the Central Election Commission of Belarus refused to register the initiative group to nominate him.

Sergei Leonidovich Tikhanovsky (Russian: Серге́й Леони́дович Тихано́вский) or Siarhiej Leanidavič Cichanoŭski (Belarusian: Сярге́й Леані́давіч Ціхано́ўскі; born 18 August 1978) is a Belarusian YouTuber, video blogger, dissident and pro-democracy activist. He is considered by Amnesty International to be a prisoner of conscience. He is known primarily for his activism against the government of Belarus's long-serving president, Alexander Lukashenko. In May 2020, he announced his intention of running for the 2020 presidential election, but he was arrested two days after the announcement, and his wife Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya then ran in place of him as the main rival to Lukashenko in the contested election.

Tikhanovsky was born on 18 August 1978, in Horki, Mogilev Region, Belarus, and raised in Gomel.