President Joe Biden stiffened sanctions on Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko’s regime on Monday, answering opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya’s appeal for political reinforcements in conjunction with the United Kingdom and Canada.
“These steps are a further consequence to the Belarusian authorities’ continued flagrant disregard for human rights and Belarus’s failure to comply with its obligations under international human rights law,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday. “We will continue working with the international community to hold to account those responsible for human rights violations and abuses in Belarus.”
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Western officials unveiled the measures just weeks after a visit to Washington from Tikhanovskaya, who argued that Lukashenko is vulnerable to sanctions that sow dissension within his “cliques and cronies.” The new measures were unveiled as Lukashenko held a “big conversation” with state media and foreign journalists in an apparent effort to project stability on the anniversary of the Aug. 9, 2020, presidential election that sparked a domestic political uproar
“Choke on your sanctions, lapdogs of America,” Lukashenko responded when the BBC’s Sarah Rainsford asked about U.K. moves.
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Tikhanovskaya hopes that Lukashenko and his wealthiest allies will be feeling the squeeze.
“They understand only the language of sanctions, and they’re afraid of sanctions,” she told the Washington Examiner during an interview last month between meetings with Biden and other U.S. officials. “And we are waiting for a split of elites, because of sanctions … Lukashenko is also dependent on businesses around him, businesses of his cronies that are based on the work of oil industry, of potash industry. And they will put pressure on him.”
The new sanctions target Belarus’s energy industry and its fertilizer trade, which is one of the regime’s chief export products. The Treasury Department also blacklisted 23 individuals tied to the regime, including an oligarch who enjoys “exclusive control over the transit of coal through Belarus,” in addition to owning the “only private Belarusian company allowed to export petroleum products from state-owned refineries.”
U.S. and British officials also took aim at Belarus’s tobacco industry, which is dominated by a former Lukashenko aide.
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“The Lukashenko regime continues to crush democracy and violate human rights in Belarus,” British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said. “These sanctions demonstrate that the U.K. will not accept Lukashenko’s actions since the fraudulent election.”
