EU To Consider Sanctions As Protests, Strikes Pressure Belarus President Lukashenko

As protests and strikes escalate against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko over alleged electoral fraud, calls are growing in the west to sanction the leaders of the former Soviet republic.

Lukashenko has served as president of Belarus since 1994 and has largely benefitted from his close ties with Russia and its leader Vladimir Putin.

But now pressure is increasing on Lukashenko to resign.

The country’s Central Election Commission claimed that Lukashenko won 80.1% of the vote in the presidential election last week, trouncing opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who received only 10.1%. (Tikhanovskaya has since fled to Lithuania and said the results were rigged)

BBC reported that an opposition rally in the capital city of Minsk on Sunday was "the largest in the history of independent Belarus.” With factory workers joining students and other opponents, more strikes are planned for this week.

Meanwhile, the European Union will convene a virtual emergency summit on Wednesday to consider sanctions against Lukashenko and his government whom they accuse of acts of "violence, repression and the falsification of election results.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tweeted that more sanctions were needed against "those who violated democratic values or abused human rights in Belarus."

On Monday, the British government also rejected the results of the Belarusian poll.

"The world has watched with horror at the violence used by the Belarusian authorities to suppress the peaceful protests that followed this fraudulent presidential election," Britain’s Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said. "The U.K. does not accept the results."

The U.S. government also condemned the election as "not free and fair.”

But Lukashenko’s most important ally Putin has offered his military’s assistance if threats to oust him become serious.

Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Atlantic Council in Washington, commented that as foreign investors have largely avoided Belarus because of its authoritarian regime, the country “has long suffered economic stagnation.”

But if Lukashenko should fall, he noted, Belarus’ “prospects for establishing a normal market economy are surprisingly strong,” partly due to its strong educational system.

Aslund wrote that under Lukashenko, Belarus has maintained a Soviet-style, state-controlled economy that primarily benefits Lukashenko, his family, and cronies.

The Belarusian public sector, he said, comprises 75% of the economy, and is highly dependent on heavy industry and dominated by a handful of large state-owned enterprises. The five largest such enterprises – potash company Belaruskali, two large oil refineries, the Minsk Tractor Works, and the Minsk Automobile Plant – tend to be heavily subsidized and inefficient, Aslund added.

Of course, Russia looms large over the Belarus economy – mostly by purchasing its goods and by providing Lukashenko with cheap oil and gas. However, Aslund pointed out that Moscow has been gradually easing these energy subsidies in order to place even more pressure on Lukashenko and exert greater control on Minsk.

In 2011 Belarus was to receive a bailout from the International Monetary Fund, but the loan was squelched when Lukashenko refused to abide by some of the reforms the IMF demanded in exchange. Lukashenko eventually received a $3 billion loan from Eurasian Development Bank, which was established in 2006 by Russia and Kazakhstan.

After Lukashenko freed Belarus’ political prisoners in 2016, the EU relaxed its personal sanctions against him, while the IMF, the World Bank, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, or EBRD, started to slowly develop new relations with Minsk.

Aslund cautions that in the event that Lukashenko is removed from power, the west must intervene to assist the country.

“If Lukashenko falls, Belarus will need an IMF program as soon as a new government is installed, and the World Bank and the EBRD would be needed to assist with deregulation and privatization,” Aslund concluded. “The EU will also have a role to play. It should welcome a new government by activating its Eastern Partnership program for Belarus.”

Joerg Forbrig, the director for Central and Eastern Europe at the German Marshall Fund think tank, told Deutsche Welle that he thinks Lukashenko is finished.

"We see strikes and a mass movement that has one central demand: for him to go," Forbrig said. "These are European values that are being trampled by the regime in a neighboring country.”

It remains unclear if Putin really will seek to save Lukashenko through military intervention.

The Financial Times reported that Russia has long considered post-Soviet Belarus “a client state between it and the EU, and Minsk relies heavily on financial aid and subsidies from Moscow. … Putin has in recent years sought to press ahead with a decades old plan to deeper integrate the two countries.”

But some analysts think Putin will only watch from the sidelines.

The Kremlin’s statements on Belarus contain “a lot about friendship between peoples, but not a word about support for the current Belarusian president,” said Artyom Shraibman, a Minsk-based political commentator. “The Kremlin has taken a wait-and-see attitude.”

Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of R. Politik, a Russian political risk consultancy, said: “Putin sees this as Lukashenko’s internal affair. If it was about Lukashenko versus the west, then it would be a very different story, and the Kremlin would speak differently. It is a dangerous situation, any protests are a challenge for Russia as well. But right now they believe it is manageable and a consequence of bad decisions by Lukashenko.”