Belarusian Olympic sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya arrived at Warsaw airport on Wednesday evening after passing through Vienna.
The plane of the Polish company LOT from the Austrian capital landed in Warsaw at 18:11 GMT.
Threatened to be forcibly repatriated to Belarus after criticizing sports bodies following a dispute at the Tokyo Olympics, the 24-year-old was initially scheduled to take a direct flight from Tokyo to Warsaw.
But she had changed her route at the last minute.
Tsimanouskaya "landed safely in Warsaw," tweeted Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Przydacz.
At the airport, she did not go through the passenger arrival terminal, but met a Belarusian opposition figure, Pavel Latushka.
"We hope that the agony of this regime will end soon and that Kristina can return, to conquer new sporting heights in new Belarus," tweeted the latter, with a photo of the meeting at the airport.
We are glad that Kristina Timanovskaya managed to get to Warsaw safely!
We hope that the agony of the regime will soon end, and Kristina will be able to return to conquering new sports peaks in the New Belarus!
# FreeBelarus⚪️🔴⚪️ pic.twitter.com/DbwThQlH93
- Pavel Latushka (@PavelLatushka) August 4, 2021
Another sportswoman flees Belarus
In Vienna, where she landed shortly after 1:00 p.m., the police and Austrian State Secretary Magnus Brunner were waiting for her, who came to meet her. Krystsina Tsimanouskaya appeared "in good shape, given the circumstances," he told reporters after speaking briefly with her. “She naturally worries about her family. She is tired and tense after the events of recent days, "" nervous about what awaits ", detailed Mr. Brunner. Her husband, athlete Arseni Zdanevich, also fled Belarus after the sprinter's statements. Poland also granted him a humanitarian visa, but he did not disclose when he would join Warsaw.
The athlete did not speak either when she left Tokyo, nor during her transit in Vienna, nor when she arrived in Warsaw, but she is expected to speak on Thursday, according to the pro-democracy Belarusian opposition.
The Krystsina Tsimanouskaya affair has dominated the extra-sporting news of the Tokyo Games in recent days.
She said Sunday to have escaped forced repatriation to Belarus, a few days after openly criticizing the athletics federation of her country.
Read also Who is Lukashenko, the all-powerful President of Belarus?
Yana Maksimava, a Belarusian sportswoman who competed in the 2008 and 2012 Olympics in heptathlon, also said this week that she would not be returning to her country. On Instagram, she writes that she will stay in Germany with her husband and daughter: “Unfortunately, now you can lose not only your freedom, but also your life [in Belarus]… Here you can breathe easily and be one of those who fight for freedom of expression ”.
Her husband, Andrei Krauchanka, who won a medal at the Beijing Games in 2008 and openly supported the protests against Lukashenko, was among those arrested and beaten during protests last year.
This week was also marked by the death of Vitali Chychov in Kiev.
This Belarusian activist was the director of an NGO aimed at helping opponents of the Belarusian regime to go into exile in Ukraine, and was found hanged.
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A post shared by Yana Maksimova-Krauchanka🤍❤️🤍 (@_maksimava_yana)
