Kolesnikova tore up her passport rather than let her kidnappers force her to leave Belarus.

“She was pushed into the back seat (of the car), she yelled that she wasn’t going anywhere,” Ms Kolesnikova’s colleague Anton Rodnenkov told a news conference in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, on Tuesday.

Mr Rodnenkov said he and another colleague had been kidnapped on Monday, driven between buildings, and interrogated with hoods over their heads and their hands tied.

They accepted an offer to leave Belarus with Ms Kolesnikova but when the car reached the border she refused to cross. The two men told journalists they did not know where she was now.

She’s a brave woman.