Tsepkalo, who ran against Lukashenko in last year’s election, left Belarus after another prominent opposition leader, Victor Babariko, was jailed before the election. Tsepkalo’s wife, Veronika, and Babariko’s campaign manager, Maria Kolesnikova, united as a trio of female candidates alongside Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. (Babariko was sentenced to 14 years in prison this month in a trial condemned by the United States and the European Union as a sham.) Tsepkalo is consulting with governments, mainly in Europe and Central Asia, on setting up IT hubs.
