[5] Sannikov was a candidate at the 2010 presidential election in Belarus, and had the second highest percentage of the popular votes after incumbent Alexander Lukashenko.

[10] According to his wife, noted journalist Iryna Khalip, as of September 2011 Sannikov was in grave danger of murder and injury while incarcerated, and was being pressured by authorities to leave politics.

[citation needed] His grandfather Konstantin Sannikov was a well-known actor and film director in the Byelorussian SSR,[15] one of founders of the Janka Kupala National Theatre,[16] and a teacher at the Belarusian Theater and Art Institute in Moscow.

[4] As Deputy Minister in winter of 1995, he co-authored a paper defending the Nunn-Lugar program, and admonishing the U.S. Congress for its inclination to reduce its funding.

The program, a part of the U.S. Department of Defense, provided Belarus with technical and financial assistance to reduce and disarm nuclear weapons.

The group hosts one of the most popular Belarusian news web pages, and is a rare voice of opposition to the Lukashenko party in Belarus.

[3] In 1998, Sannikov and Hienadz Karpienka created the Coordinating Council of Democratic Forces of Belarus, which actively speaks for human rights.

[14] In the years following, Sannikov helped organize a variety of non-violent protests in Belarus, including protests against the elections of 2001, 2004, 2006, and 2008, which were heavily criticized by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the EU for lack of transparency, intimidation of voters, suppression of opposition groups, and suspected falsification of results.

[22] When the mass protests after the presidential election in 2006 were violently suppressed by riot police, Sannikov stated he was beaten and jailed, and his computers, disks, and memory sticks were seized.

[5] In 2008 Andrei Sannikov, together with Viktar Ivashkevich, Mikhail Marynich and other politicians, initiated the civil campaign European Belarus.

[3] In March 2010 Andrei Sannikov declared his intention on the TV channel Belsat to take part in Belarus presidential election of 2010 as a candidate.

In January 2007, Sannikov voiced disapproval of the natural gas supply contract Lukashenko signed with Russia.

Russia has frequently used Gazprom, its state-run gas company, to put pressure on countries such as Ukraine and Georgia.

Sannikov worried that as Lukashenko's cordial relations with the Kremlin went sour, especially as Boris Yeltsin was replaced with Vladimir Putin, the new gas supply contract could be used by Russia to manipulate the Belarusian economy.

[19] In the first week of September 2010, late on Friday afternoon, Sannikov's close friend[3] and campaign press secretary Oleg Bebenin was found hanged at his summer house on the outskirts of Minsk.

[citation needed] On 29 November 2010, Sannikov organized a meeting at his alma mater Minsk State Linguistic University, and about 500 people took part.

Yermoshyna was a member of Lukashenka's political team, compromising her neutrality, and was under international scrutiny for purportedly rigging the previous election.

[7] The Obama administration issued a statement saying that the United States did not consider the election to be legitimate and called for the prisoners to be released; by contrast, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev described the Belarus situation as an "internal affair".

[27] On 25 December, the Viasna Human Rights Centre in Minsk revealed that Belarusian authorities had attempted to seize Sannikov's three-year-old son.

[32] The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Belarus accused Sannikov of organizing a "mass riot, attended by violence against a person, violent attacks, destruction of property, and armed resistance to representatives of the authorities".

[32] The German section of Amnesty International issued an "urgent action" alert, stating that they believed Sannikov to be facing torture and maltreatment while in custody.

[10] On 15 April, Minsk City Court heard an appeal from Andrei Sannikov's lawyers, asking for his criminal persecution to be stopped and a softer measure of restraint to be enacted.

[42] Andrei made similar comments following the 2020 Belarusian presidential election, praising opposition candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who was forced into exile by the authorities.

[39] In November 2015, Sannikov and Mikola Statkevich both agreed to coordinate their activity to consolidate the "Belarusian democratic forces".