Europe has forgiven Lukashenko

On February 15, the European Union lifted almost all sanctions against the President of Belarus and 170 other officials and businessmen

Now Belarusian officials are allowed to enter the territory of the EU, and Belarusians are already ironically discussing where Lukashenka and his sons will go first - to The Hague for an excursion or (like many of their subjects) to Polish Bialystok for cheap goods and products.

Four people remained under sanctions - they are suspected in the EU of involvement in the disappearances of Lukashenka's opponents in 1999-2000. Also, the ban on the supply of "weapons, police equipment, as well as dual-use equipment that can be used for internal repression" to Minsk has not been lifted.

For the first time, sanctions against Belarusian officials and enterprises were introduced after the blatantly rigged presidential elections in 2006, which were also accompanied by heavy use of force against the opposition. In the fall of 2008, relations between Minsk and Brussels warmed up, and the EU suspended sanctions. But they resumed and intensified after another round of violence in Belarus - it was associated with the 2010 presidential election. The Europeans “understood” neither the brutal dispersal of a mass protest against electoral fraud, nor the arrest by the country's KGB of 7 out of 10 presidential candidates right on the voting day. In October 2015, after the next presidential election, the European Union froze the sanctions for four months - but finally lifted them only now.

The Europeans put up with Lukashenka because they consider it possible to win him over to their side in the confrontation with Putin

But still, why were sanctions lifted from Minsk, the “experience” of which is much longer than that of Western sanctions against Russia? After all, in fact, there have been no fundamental changes in the domestic policy of the Belarusian regime. Voting fraud has not stopped (which was reflected in the corresponding OSCE/ODIHR report at the end of January), changes are not being made to the Electoral Code, the media have not become freer (on January 25, the police brutally beat a journalist right in the Minsk court), the persecution of civil activists has not stopped, but Alyaksandr Lukashenka explicitly forbade reforms in the economy.

If we analyze the statements of European politicians, it turns out that the sanctions were lifted for the three merits of Alexander Lukashenko: for the creation of a negotiating platform in Minsk on the conflict in Ukraine, for the release of political prisoners in August 2015, and for the first presidential elections held without public violence against the opposition.

According to many Belarusian experts, the Europeans actually put up with the “petty dictator” Lukashenka simply because they consider it possible to somehow win him over to their side in the confrontation with the “big dictator” Vladimir Putin. Indeed, Russia now has very few open friends in the world. Belarus controlled by Lukashenka, on the one hand, publicly demonstrates loyalty to Russia - the republic always votes in solidarity with Russia in the UN, and the “father” himself does not stop rhetoric in the spirit of “adversaries will attack - we will lie down under the tanks, but we will not let them go to Moscow.”

The affairs of official Minsk, however, tell a completely different story. Lukashenko has long proclaimed a multi-vector foreign policy, has already relatively established relations with the United States and is now preparing to receive a new large loan from the IMF. Belarus is developing new weapons together with China (MLRS "Polonaise") or Ukraine (ATGM "Skif" and much more). The Belarusians even launched their second satellite, using the services of not the Russians, but the Chinese. In this situation, the Europeans are trying to show Lukashenka that in the West there can be more “buns” of all kinds, while Russia, which is in an economic crisis, is no longer so inclined to help its younger Belarusian brother.