'I almost forgot how to talk'

Freed Belarusian dissident Siarhei Tsikhanouski recalls his five years in solitary confinement and life in freezing cells

- ELISE MORTON, DASHA LITVINOVA

Siarhei Tsikhanouski is almost unrecognisable. Belarus's key opposition figure, imprisoned in 2020 and unexpectedly released on Saturday, once weighed 135kg (21st 2lb) at 1.92 metres (nearly 6ft 4 ins tall), but now is at just 79 kilos (12st 4lb).

Mr Tsikhanouski was freed alongside 13 other prisoners and brought to Vilnius, the capital of neighbouring Lithuania, where he was reunited with his wife, exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, and their children. Speaking on Sunday, Mr Tsikhanouski tries to smile and joke, but struggles to hold back heavy sighs recalling what he endured behind bars.

"This is definitely torture," Mr Tsikhanouski said. Prison officials "kept telling me, 'You will be here not just for the 20 years we've already given you'. We will convict you again," he said. "They told me that 'You would never get out'. And they kept repeating, 'You will die here""

One of Belarus's most prominent opposition figures, Mr Tsikhanouski said he "almost forgot how to speak" during his years in solitary confinement. He was held in complete isolation, denied medical care, and given barely enough food.

"If you had seen me when they threw only two spoons of porridge onto my plate, two small spoons," he said, adding that he couldn't buy anything in the prison kiosk. "They would sometimes give me a little tube of toothpaste, a little piece of soap as charity. Sometimes they would, sometimes they wouldn't."

Now 46, Mr Tsikhanouski, a popular blogger and activist, was freed just hours after Belarusian authorities announced that authoritarian president Alexander Lukashenko met with US president Donald Trump's envoy for Ukraine in the Belarusian capital, Minsk. Keith Kellogg became the highest-ranking US official in years to visit Belarus, Moscow's close and dependent ally.