One night in September 2020, Hanna Kanavalava fled her native Belarus and crossed the border into Ukraine -- on foot, in the dark and with her two young grandchildren in tow.

"That's when Ivan asked me, 'Grandma, is Mum in prison?' And that's when I told him the truth," Hanna said.

Ivan, now nine, and his sister Anastasiya, seven, have lived in exile for almost four years, separated from both their parents, who were jailed in Belarus for opposing the strongman President Alexander Lukashenko.

They are just two among hundreds of children forced apart from their parents by Lukashenko's crackdown on dissent, a campaign that has jailed hundreds of regime critics following 2020 protests that threatened his quarter-century grip on power.

Ivan and Anastasiya's mother, Antanina Kanavalava, worked for Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the opposition leader who claimed victory against Lukashenko in presidential elections that summer.

Rights groups and independent monitors say the vote was marred by rampant fraud and ballot stuffing as official results showed Lukashenko, in power since 1994, won with 80 percent.

His riot police responded forcefully against the protestors and a wave of arrests and tightening repression........

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