A Belarusian activist living in Ukraine who helped his fellow countrymen flee the dictatorship of Alexander Lukashenko has been found dead. 

Vitaly Shishov, 26, who ran the Belarusian House group in Kiev, was found hanged in a park close to his house today having gone missing while out for a jog on Monday -  with friends saying there were signs he had been beaten, including a broken nose.

Police have opened a murder investigation and say they will be looking into the possibility that Shishov was killed and his death made to look like a suicide, after he recently reported being followed by 'strangers' on his runs. 

His death comes amid a bloody crackdown on dissent by Lukashenko that saw Olympic officials try to kidnap sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya from the Tokyo Games at the weekend after she criticised her trainers online.   

There are fears that the 24-year-old's family could now be targeted after she slipped their clutches and made her way to the Polish embassy in Tokyo, where she is holed up having been granted asylum.

Olympic officials have already contacted her mother, who is still in Belarus, and told that her daughter has been recruited by foreign spies and must be brought home.

Meanwhile husband Arseni Zhdanevich has fled to Kiev, the same city where Shishov was found dead, in the hopes of finding temporary safety there before joining his wife in Poland later.

She is due to fly to Warsaw on Wednesday.