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When world leaders gather at the United Nations, as they have this week, it's also a chance for activists to try and champion their causes. NPR's Michele Kelemen caught up with an opposition leader from Belarus, whose husband was recently released from prison.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya is trying to get the U.N. to focus on her former Soviet Republic, which borders Ukraine. We speak in the General Assembly entrance under a life-size model of a Soviet Sputnik satellite.
SVIATLANA TSIKHANOUSKAYA: Belarus is like communism with taste of cappuccino.
KELEMEN: She says the country's longtime ruler, Alexander Lukashenko, presents himself as a modern leader, but rules like Stalin, jailing opponents like her husband, Sergei. He was released in June after the Trump administration sent a delegation to Minsk.
TSIKHANOUSKAYA: I'm so grateful that, among, I suppose, thousands of different folders on the table of President Trump, there is a folder with political prisoners of Belarus.
KELEMEN: She says Lukashenko wants recognition, but she thinks Trump can use his leverage to get more prisoners, including a human rights defender out.
TSIKHANOUSKAYA: Ales Bialiatski is our Nobel Peace Prize winner. And I think that if President Trump succeeds in releasing him and other people, Ales Bialiatski can nominate President Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize award as well.
KELEMEN: Tsikhanouskaya does have some words of caution for the Trump administration. The U.S. has tried before to lure Lukashenko away from the Kremlin's orbit, and the leader of Belarus has said he wants to strike a deal with Trump. But she says he has a symbiotic relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
TSIKHANOUSKAYA: And of course, we explained this to the administration, President Trump, that Lukashenko is a lame duck. His time is outgoing. He's dragging our country, you know, closer to Russia, while the Belarusian nation wants to be part of the Western free world, you know, and we have to listen to people, not one crazy dictator who is governing for 30 years already.
KELEMEN: She says President Trump has so far only used carrots with Lukashenko, but could pressure him, not only to release more prisoners, but also to let them stay in Belarus, rather than forcing them into exile, like Tsikhanouskaya and her husband.
Michele Kelemen, NPR News, the United Nations.
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