'No time to cry', Belarus opposition leader says of husband's sentence

Belarus's exiled opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya on Tuesday said she will not "cry" over a lengthy prison term the regime in Minsk handed to her husband Sergei Tikhanovsky.

Instead, she vowed  in an interview, she will redouble her efforts to galvanize the EU to put more pressure on Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko in the name of democracy.

"I'm not going to, you know, panic because I understand that we don't have time to cry, we don't have time to think about it too much," she said.

It was Tikhanovskaya's first media reaction after a Belarus court earlier Tuesday sentenced Sergei Tikhanovsky to 18 years behind bars. 

Five other co-defendants were alongside him in the closed courtroom for the verdict in their months-long trial.

State media reported that Tikhanovsky, a 43-year-old YouTube blogger, was found guilty of organizing riots, inciting social hatred and other charges.

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya spoke in Brussels, where she was pressing EU officials to extend sanctions on Lukashenko ahead of an EU summit on Thursday.

The fact Tikhanovsky was given the maximum term possible, she said, proved that "my husband -- a brave, wonderful person -- became a personal enemy for Lukashenko".

The strongman, whose claim to re-election victory in polls last year triggered demonstrations brutally quashed by his security forces, fears the influence her husband had over the opposition, she said.