British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government plans to impose human rights sanctions on Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s Belarus as a punishment for the abuse of pro-democracy protesters.
“We are coordinating with the United States and Canada to prepare appropriate listings as a matter of urgency,” British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told Parliament on Thursday. “We will apply all the tools at our disposal to hold Lukashenko and his regime to account, and we call on him to engage in serious and credible dialogue with the opposition.”
Raab’s announcement represents a sharpening of European pressure on Lukashenko, who has relied on violence against protesters and support from Russia to withstand the domestic backlash occurring after his 26 years in power. Still, he avoided stating whether the sanctions would target Lukashenko specifically.
“We’re considering the whole range of potential individuals,” Raab said when asked if the United Kingdom would blacklist Lukashenko.
European Union leaders likewise are uncertain about sanctioning Lukashenko due to disagreements within the continental bloc that have prevented Brussels from imposing human rights sanctions in the weeks following Lukashenko’s claimed victory in an Aug. 9 election widely regarded as fraudulent. An unrelated dispute over tensions between Turkey and Greece has contributed to the delay, to the dismay of EU leaders.
“We can’t have another Foreign Affairs Council incapable of finding unanimity on sanctions against Belarus,” said Josep Borrell, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, this week. “It’s becoming personal because I understand clearly that the credibility of the EU and of forging … a common foreign affairs policy very much depend on this.”
The Belarus sanctions were on the agenda when Raab met last week with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“We also discussed the need for every nation, especially Russia, to respect the sovereignty of Belarus,” Pompeo told reporters at the time. “The Belarusians protesting what were falsified election results are truly inspiring to all of us. The brutality against them must stop.”
NATO allies worry that Russian President Vladimir Putin is using the crisis to push Lukashenko to agree to the de facto “absorption” of Belarus into Russia, which the Belarusian strongman had managed to resist in recent years.
“The danger and the risk is that the price would be the deployment of Russian troops permanently in Belarusian territory,” Lithuanian Defense Minister Raimundas Karoblis told the Washington Examiner this week. “It’s definitely a threat for NATO, for the West.”
Raab acknowledged to colleagues that he has similar misgivings “about the predatory approach of Russia” to Belarus.
“We’re watching very carefully, along with our international partners,” he said. “That is also one of the reasons that we’ve taken the measures that I’ve set out today.”
