On Friday, the EU added Alexander Lukashenko and 14 Belarusian officials (including his eldest son Viktor) to the sanctions list.
Lukashenko’s name was not on the previously adopted EU sanctions list, which included 40 Belarusian officials. This conditional favor was seen as an opportunity for the then-official president to enter into a dialogue with the public in order to overcome the political crisis that began after the farce of the presidential election on 9 August. The EU demonstrated Lukashenko’s “goodwill” gesture and did not include it in the first wave of sanctions. Now that Lukashenko’s term as president has ended on November 5, and the regime’s repression of protesters has not only ended, it has even come into force, the EU has ended this “favoritism”.
The question may arise: what is the point of these sanctions if, after all that has been done, Lukashenko has been denied his way to Europe and has already secured his assets (if any) so that they are not affected by the sanctions? Obviously, these sanctions have primarily a symbolic meaning. However, they should not be considered insignificant.
First of all, the meaning of symbols should never be underestimated. Rather, their importance is difficult to overestimate. If we look at what the most intense public debate is about, we will notice that these are often issues that have very little practical but huge symbolic meaning. One side says – well, what will be there if we pass this or that law? Will heaven fall to earth? As long as the other side doesn’t give in with amazing stubbornness, and the tug of war continues for years, all sides are spending a huge amount of resources and effort.
The regime and its face – Lukashenko is not more attractive than the sanctions imposed. Not only in the eyes of active protesters, but also in the eyes of relatively neutral Belarusians. Support for the regime by the bureaucracy, including in the eyes of the supreme bureaucracy, is not increasing either. In Belarus, unlike Russia, the EU is much more balanced. Lukashenko never, but for the past five years in particular, has not tried to confront the EU. Rather, he is accused of sitting in two chairs and milking money from both Russia and the EU.
Most socially active people associate the future of Belarus with the EU rather than Russia, so EU pressure does not allow Lukashenko to pretend to be a “poor victim” that the evil West is overcoming. This method may work in Russia, but in Belarus it can affect only a very small part of the population. Belarus has Poland and Lithuania as neighbors, and both countries visit Belarusians often and frequently enough for most Belarusians to be treated very sensibly in the EU.
However, if Lukashenko himself is likely to spit on these sanctions, or as Naigainis, a mousetrap manufacturer, said in Pāvils Rozītis’ novel “Ceplis”: In my position, one bill more or less …, then the 14 officials, who are also included in the list of sanctions, hardly have similar feelings. These are people with a high enough income to be able to travel around Europe on a regular basis, and the fact that the door to them is now closed hardly warms their hearts. In addition, they may also have property in various Italy or Cyprus that is unpleasant to lose.
Even more dangerous for the regime are the sanctions on those officials who could theoretically be included in the list of sanctions but did not. This time. This time I was lucky, but where is the guarantee that next time it will not happen? The feeling that Lukashenko has become not a source of potential benefits, but a source of various negations, can cause all kinds of thoughts in the minds of these people. All the more so if on the same day, the Kremlin-controlled Russian news agency lenta.ru publishes devastating material on how the results of the 9 August elections were fabricated. The top (and not so high) officials in Belarus can take the news as a signal that Moscow has already been written down by Lukashenko. So why should I still bother the parties for him?
The craziest thing is that such thoughts arise not only in the heads of the regime’s staff, but also in Lukashenko’s already irritated head. He realizes that he has become a superfluous stone at his feet and is waiting for betrayal at every moment. Anyone can pierce the dagger in the back, and in this case it is not just an imaginary metaphor. There are confusing frame shifts. KGB Chief Vakuļčik is being replaced by Terteļs, Chairman of the State Audit Office. Yesterday, the so-loyal Interior Minister Karajev became the local government in the Grodno region. These rotations and dismissals of officials can be explained by only one thing – that nowhere is there a long-standing cohesive group that could become the core of a potential conspiracy. Hardly such a nervous atmosphere promotes trust in the leader, who every day presents various threats to society, which no one really takes for granted.
Of course, EU sanctions are far from the main source of pressure on the regime, but certainly one of them. At the same time, the German Bundestag yesterday adopted a special resolution for the government to prepare a comprehensive program of support for the democratic movement in Belarus and, in turn, to suspend any cooperation with the Lukashenko regime. On Thursday, the OSCE adopted a statement on investigating and documenting the crimes of the Lukashenko regime, so that none of the perpetrators even hopes to escape punishment in the future. All these steps are gradually destroying the regime, but the main ripper is, of course, the relentless popular protest and unwillingness to live in tyranny. Helping the Belarusian people to get rid of this tyrant is also the main purpose of EU sanctions.
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