Aliaksandr Milinkevich, a prominent Belarusian opposition figure who challenged longtime President Aliaksandr Lukashenko in a disputed 2006 election, died on August 11, 2026 at the age of 79. He had undergone a complicated surgery late last year to remove a blood clot from his carotid artery.
Born in Grodno in 1947, Milinkevich ran as the united opposition candidate in 2006, officially receiving about 6 percent of the vote in a contest the opposition dismissed as rigged. He went on to found the "For Freedom" civic movement and was awarded the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought that same year. After the crackdown on 2020 mass protests, he went into exile and served as an adviser to opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, also co-founding a Warsaw-based Free Belarusian University.
Polish politicians led tributes, with Marshal of the Senate Małgorzata Kidawa-Błońska expressing condolences and Paweł Łatushka calling him a "moral standard" for the Belarusian democratic cause.