Opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanouskaya on Tuesday denied being forced to leave Belarus, contradicting comments from her campaign team, and said the decision to leave had been very difficult.
"I made a very difficult decision. It's a decision I made absolutely independently," she said in a video posted on YouTube.
Belarus's state border committee had denied accusations that Tikhanouskaya had been forcibly removed to neighboring Lithuania amid bloody protests against the contested re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko.