Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya is on a four-day visit to the Czech Republic. The leader was invited to Prague by the speaker of the Senate, Miloš Vystrčil. On Monday afternoon, she and her team met for talks at Charles University. On the agenda: ways to help students and to support democracy in Belarus.

“I don't know a single Belarusian who supports the war in Ukraine,” says Larysa Aharkava, a Charles University graduate. She came to the Czech Republic from Belarus at the age of 18 and has been working for Google for the last 12 years.

“It has to be talked about, even though personally it hurts a lot...” Belarusian-born historian Alena Marková from the Faculty of Humanities warns that the ‘normalisation’ now in Belarus is similar to Czechoslovakia after 1968.