On September 11, 2025, Mikalai Statkevich was taken from detention to the Lithuanian border together with 52 other Belarusian political prisoners. Belarusian and foreign media described the event as a release, but the reported circumstances indicate that it was a forced removal from the country.
Former political prisoners and Statkevich’s associate Yauhen Vilski, who arrived from Vilnius to the neutral zone, described what happened next. According to them, Statkevich refused to go to Lithuania, forced open the bus door and stepped out in order to return to Belarus.
“I am a man of honor. I decide my own life. Who is Lukashenko to decide where I should live? Belarus is my country, and I am staying here,” Statkevich said, according to Vilski.
Later that evening, Lithuanian State Border Guard Service representative Giedrius Mišutis said that Statkevich had returned to Belarus accompanied by several Belarusian officers. His current whereabouts are unknown.
Statkevich has long been one of the prominent figures of the Belarusian opposition. In the 1990s he took part in street protests; in 2004 he received three years of restricted freedom after demonstrations against the referendum that removed presidential term limits; and after the December 19, 2010 election protests, when he was a presidential candidate, he was sentenced to five years on charges of organizing mass unrest.
On May 31, 2020, Statkevich was detained again, more than a month before the August protests. He was later sentenced to 14 years in a special-regime colony. The last letter from him arrived in early February 2023, after which there was no contact for more than two and a half years.
After his release in 2015, Statkevich publicly said he would not leave the country and intended to continue the struggle for a free Belarus. Testimony from witnesses and the Lithuanian side suggests that his actions at the border on September 11, 2025 reflected the same position after another long prison term.