Maria Kolesnikova and Viktor Babaryko (in the background) greet Foreign Minister Johann Vadefulem in Berlin on December 19, 2025.
According to Reuters, Maria Kolesnikova and Viktor Babariko will hold a press conference in Berlin on December 23.
On December 19, Maria Kolesnikova and Viktor Babaryka arrived in Germany – former political prisoners of the Lukashenko regime, according to Viktor Babaryka’s Telegram channel. They met with Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadeful.
“Viktor and Maria expressed gratitude to the United States for their efforts to secure the release of political prisoners and expressed hope that Europe will become more actively involved in this process. Our team also stressed the need to reduce the isolation of Belarusian society and restore relations with the outside world.”
– Babaryka’s team reports
New plans and next steps
According to Reuters, Maria Kolesnikova and Viktor Babaryka will hold a press conference in Berlin on December 23.
The group released on December 13 consisted of 123 political prisoners. Most of them were sent to Ukraine, and Nobel Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski was brought to Lithuania.
The group that arrived in Ukraine included representatives of the political opposition Viktor Babaryka and Maria Kolesnikova, their ally Maxim Znak, human rights defender Vlad Labkovich, political scientist Oleksandr Feduta, politician Pavlo Severynets, and others.
A large group of 89 Belarusian political prisoners arrived from Ukraine to Warsaw in the night of December 18. Among those who arrived in the Polish capital were Kolesnikova and Babaryka. On December 14, German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt announced that Germany would take them in. Twenty people arrived in Vilnius.
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