Belarus crackdown fails to crush opposition spirit

Maria Kolesnikova has spent the past 11 months in a tiny cell, only allowed out for an hour's exercise each day. But when the opposition activist appeared in court this week, she was dancing.

Together with fellow activist Maxim Znak she's been declared a threat to national security and accused of plotting to seize power.

But as their trial began on Wednesday, Maria Kolesnikova was defiantly cheerful, smiling broadly at state TV cameras and making heart-shapes with her hands from inside a cage surrounded by armed guards.

Ahead of the hearing, Maxim Znak told the BBC that he is innocent and argued that closing the trial, supposedly for security reasons, underlines that.

'I didn't do anything,' he wrote in an exclusive interview from prison. 'There is only one reason to hide supposedly criminal public calls from the public (and from me too, so far) - and that's that they don't exist,' Mr Znak said.

The pair are among the most high-profile figures to face trial since last summer's disputed presidential elections sparked street protests on a scale never seen before in Belarus. One year on, the authoritarian Alexander Lukashenko remains in power - under Western sanctions, but supported by Russia - and the streets have been cleared of demonstrators.