EU Ready to Sanction Lukashenko Over Contested Election
EU Ready to Sanction Belarus’s Lukashenko Over Contested Vote
(Bloomberg) -- The European Union moved toward sanctioning Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko after he disregarded calls to work toward “new free and fair elections.”
The 27-nation bloc also pledged on Monday to take up a German-French proposal to blacklist individuals in Russia over the attempted murder of opposition leader Alexey Navalny.
EU foreign ministers signaled a readiness to add Lukashenko to a blacklist of Belarusian authorities implicated in ballot fraud and a subsequent crackdown on protesters. The penalties involve asset freezes and travel bans.
In a joint statement at a meeting in Luxembourg, the ministers said they would “take further restrictive measures against entities and high-ranking officials, including Alexander Lukashenko.” While the original communique signaled the EU would pursue measures if the situation in Belarus didn’t improve, the qualification was later removed.
The EU on Oct. 2 blacklisted 40 Belarusian officials over a contested Aug. 9 presidential vote while sparing Lukashenko himself on the grounds the gesture might prod him to start an “inclusive national dialog.” Instead, the Belarusian regime has continued to crack down on protesters.
“We should already get a new sanctions package off the ground and Lukashenko should be among the people sanctioned,” German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told reporters in Luxembourg.
Lukashenko, who has been in office for 26 years, was sworn in for a sixth term on Sept. 23 as hundreds of thousands of opponents turned out across the country for weekly demonstrations against his regime. Western governments have refused to recognize his legitimacy, while exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said she is the only leader elected by the Belarusian people.
Lukashenko is an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has has offered Belarus $1.5 billion in loans and blamed the domestic unrest on the West. The U.K. and Canada have already sanctioned the Belarusian strongman over the election two months ago.
Russia Sanctions
Regarding the Navalny case, the EU foreign ministers also cleared the way for legal experts to vet a plan drawn up by Germany and France last week for bloc-wide asset freezes and travel bans on unidentified Russian officials, who could be military-intelligence officers, according to the the EU’s foreign-policy chief Josep Borrell.
The green light comes less than a week after the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons confirmed that a military-grade Novichok nerve agent was used to poison Navalny in Russia on Aug. 20. He was then flown to Germany for treatment.
Read More: Navalny Blames Putin for Poisoning, Kremlin Calls Him CIA Asset
The case marks the latest in a series of EU-Russia disputes including the 2014 annexation by Moscow of the Ukrainian region of Crimea, the 2018 poisoning of a former Russian double agent on U.K. soil and the disputed Belarusian election.
The Russian government says it has no evidence that Navalny was poisoned and officials have called the case a set-up by western security services.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.