In August 9, 2020, during the vote that led to the re-election of Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusians, led by a trio of extremely courageous women – opponents Svetlana Tsikhanovskaïa, Veronika Tsepkalo and Maria Kolesnikova – tried to bring down “the last dictatorship of Europe”. The terrible repression carried out by the government, very well aided and supported by that of Moscow, which sent its security forces to it, broke this democratic momentum and drove into exile thousands of citizens who dreamed of having the possibility of choosing the future of their country.
Three years later, thousands of political prisoners are still languishing in the infamous jails of the Belarusian regime, while the country is more than ever dependent on its Russian neighbor and ” busy “ by its armed forces, according to the term of Svetlana Tsikhanovskaïa. Russian nuclear weapons are going to be deployed on Belarusian soil, in total contradiction to the Constitution, and Wagner, this criminal militia, is already rapidly deploying on its territory.
The European economic sanctions taken so far against the Lukashenko regime – after episodes of bloody repression such as the hijacking of the Ryanair plane to arrest a journalist opposing the regime or the filthy migrant smuggling organized by Minsk to destabilize Poland, Lithuania and Latvia – cannot be our only response to these more recent attacks on our model and our values.
Useful in the Kremlin
For strategic reasons, Belarus is becoming month by month an indispensable territory for Putin’s war in Ukraine, and a threat to the Ukrainians in the event of a new Russian invasion from the north. From a political point of view, the country is essential in the narrative of Putin and his “Russian world”.
Lukashenko, who for years seemed to want to resist pressure from the Russian president and even dreamed of becoming the tsar of Belarus and Russia, is now proving to be a true servant of the Kremlin’s ambitions. Politically and economically weakened for three years, the Belarusian power owes its survival only to the goodwill of Moscow.
So what to do with such a useful diet for Putin? Initially, more than deciding on new sanctions, it would be relevant to ensure the proper application of the sanctions already decided. Their bypasses are still too numerous. In a second step, we must put the package in our support for the Belarusian opposition. Embodied by Svetlana Tsikhanovskaïa, she was well structured and proclaimed a government in exile. The European and national institutions must have regular exchanges with this government and the political leaders who compose it.
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