EU countries have agreed to impose new sanctions on financial institutions and government officials Belarus As the government of President Alexander Lukashenko continues to pressure its opponents.
Foreign leaders from the European bloc on Monday took action against individuals and 86 other organizations and targeted industries including the economy, potash and oil. The US, UK and Canada also announced the seizure of officials and organizations in Belarus on the merger of Brussels in an attempt to force the government to “end its oppressive practices”.
The EU’s goals, which are yet to be finalized and signed legally, show that it will support Lukashenko’s 27-year-old dictatorship. These are the responses received by Minsk last month from a Ryanair tour to arrest blogger Roman Protasevich, which has been part of a campaign against dissidents since last year’s presidential election. Protasevich’s girlfriend Sofia Sapega, a student, was also arrested.
“We need to strengthen our fingerprints in the aftermath of civil unrest,” Alexander Schallenberg, Austria’s foreign minister, told reporters ahead of a summit in Luxembourg that the ministers had approved the sanctions. “We want to hit the financial institutions, which are responsible, not the people of Belarus, who are still suffering.”
The EU has called for an end to the economic crisis, with 78 people being evacuated from Belarus, including a security minister and a security minister. The Bloc has already instituted similar measures against a number of other officials, including Lukashenko.
Economic strategies are designed to affect other parts of the European continent. The EU wants to withhold funding from Lukashenko’s government, including through state-owned enterprises that control Belarus’s economy.
Josep Borrell, EU foreign policy chief, said the sanctions could “seriously hurt Belarus’ economy”. Heiko Maas, Germany’s Foreign Minister, said the affected areas were “of great importance to Belarus and to the interests of the state.”
Belarus exported about € 4bn of goods to the EU, Russia’s second largest exporter after last year and imported less than € 6bn, according to EU data. Its sale of petrochemicals and potash is a major factor in Lukashenko’s administration, bringing in at least $ 6.6bn in revenue by 2020.
Economic sanctions will prevent state-owned enterprises from accessing EU markets, as well as lend money from the EU Investment Bank to Belarusian government agencies. There is an exemption granted to private banks, business transactions and other local services.
The EU package offered also affects the tobacco market, adds officials. It could block the deployment of technical intelligence in Belarus and increase existing equipment, including the suspension of accurate firearms used by biathletes.
The EU ambassador insists that the package is designed to end government corruption and reduce social ills. But most European officials secretly agree that the consequences can be seen only when they are established.
The EU package is in line with sanctions imposed by the Belarus opposition group. The ministers ate breakfast on Monday and Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the main opposition candidate Lukashenko in last year’s election.
Tsikhanouskaya showed the minister a bullet that he said was taken from the lungs of a young man who was shot during a protest rally last August and thanked them for being “united in their ideology in Belarus”.
Minsk remains unrepentant under EU pressure. Last week, officials released Protasevich from the KGB prison in Belarus for a press conference while the blogger, who was under duress, spoke of his “unlimited” respect for Lukashenko.
On Monday, Belarus’s Supreme Court heard the verdict in the mouths of Viktor Babariko, a Russian bank employee arrested on corruption charges after announcing his rivalry with Lukashenko last year.
Another senior prosecutor, Tsikhanouskaya’s husband Siarhei Tsikhanousky, is facing a court hearing this weekend along with other protesters, including well-known blogger Ihar Losik.
Tsikhanouskaya says he thinks the government will consider pushing for a court order for his men and others to mobilize Belarussians to fight Lukashenko.
“[The regime] I do not want people to see that they are not broken, they are as strong as they are, and they do not want to encourage people, ”he told the Financial Times last week.
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