On Monday evening, the EU Council of Foreign Ministers adopted a decision to remove most of the sanctions against Belarus. The sanctions are canceled in relation to 170 people, including Alexander Lukashenko and his older sons Viktor and Dmitry; Lidia Ermoshina, head of the Central Election Commission; Lilia Ananich, Minister of Information; Valery Vakulchik, chairman of the KGB, and Stepan Sukhorenko, his predecessor. In addition. 10 companies are excluded from the black list: BelTechExport, Beltech Holding, Spetspriborservis, Triple, and Rakowski Brovar, football club “Dynamo,” Prostor-Trade, AquaTriple, QuartzMelProm, Bereza plant of silicate goods.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, German Foreign Minister, as he was announcing the decision, said that the main condition that determined the removal of most EU sanctions has been the release of all political prisoners in Belarus.
Andrejs Mamikins, MEP from Latvia, deputy head of the European Parliament’s delegation in Belarus, called this move a gesture of goodwill on behalf of the EU during a video conference with Belarusian journalists.
Meanwhile, Tatiana Karatkevich, Belarusian ex-presidential candidate in 2015, believes as most of the EU sanctions are lifted, the republic must demonstrate its commitment to maintaining a dialog with the EU.
“BELARUS IS BEING WITHDRAWN FROM RUSSIA’S SPHERE OF INFLUENCE AND ASSUMES A LIBERAL FACE”
The Day asked Victor MARTINOVICH, the deputy editor of BelGazeta, Minsk, to comment on the EU decision to lift the sanctions and its influence on the domestic political situation in Belarus.
“The lifting of sanctions by the European Union is of great importance. Europe has taken a big step forward. We can expect that it will make a big impact on domestic politics. There is a feeling that a big geopolitical bargaining is going on; Belarus is being withdrawn from Russian sphere of influence and assumes a liberal face in order to make everyone believe it has corrected its past mistakes. Therefore, it is good to have the sanctions lifted. After all, under the sanctions Belarus realized that it had nothing to lose, and adopted more rigid ways in the domestic policy. The cancellation of sanctions, the warming of relations with the EU, will discipline the regime and make it less authoritative.
“It is unlikely that the lifting of sanctions will breathe new life into the existing political parties, which are in fact non-governmental organizations. New genuine mass parties should emerge. The potentially biggest party is a party of entrepreneurs, which has not yet been organized. In Belarus, there are huge numbers of unemployed people, laid off from state-owned enterprises, which are not able to pay their workers even a tiny salary and therefore have to enforce a three-day working week. These people are not protected by anyone; they are not members of any political parties and would not go there. These people can organize in some spontaneous party, and a leader may appear among them.
“On the other hand, there are some political leaders with the authority, such as Mikalai Statkevich, who served five years in prison simply for having participated in the presidential elections. Such people are not allowed to register a political movement. But the fact is that to organize a political movement one does not need the permission of the Justice Ministry. The lifting of sanctions to some extent will add fuel to the fire, and there is a situation where things can flare up even more.
“Take into account this: Belarus is now facing the biggest economic crisis since the Soviet collapse. It is not yet obvious for everyone. But, for example, real estate prices have fallen to the level of a decade ago. And they will fall further. Under the slogans of nanotechnology, supercomputers and space power, Belarus has always been an appendage of Russia to process its cheap oil, which we resold to the West.
“And now, when the ongoing crisis broke in Russia due to a sharp decrease in oil prices, the opportunity of refining and reselling oil simply stopped being a device to make money. Besides, the Russian economy is now stagnating, and it used to sponsor the Belarusian economy with loans and a profitable market for Belarusian goods, in which they used to have the green light. We have lost a huge market, which we supplied not with nanotechnology or supercomputers, but only agricultural and dairy products.
“We have entered a period of economic turbulence, which will end when oil prices would return to the level of 100 dollars per barrel. And no one knows when that happens. Even the price of 50 dollars per barrel leaves Russians with no desire to support their satellites with loans and thus influence the internal policy in Belarus. So, we have an explosive situation, the dollar is growing, state-owned enterprises delay wages for several months, the government is at war with entrepreneurs, and people are being fired from everywhere. Unemployment is actually growing, and besides that, there has been introduced a tax for ‘parasitism,’ that is lack of employment. All these developments only add fuel to the fire. Belarusians are not accustomed to fights, they are afraid of revolutions; the Ukrainian example frightened them. They believe that in case of Maidan, everything would become even worse. But, nevertheless, when a person has nowhere to go, they cannot just live on air and empty promises. After the reconciliation with Europe, the EU will discipline the regime, beating the batons out of the hands of the police; it will make the situation more difficult. For the past 17 years, the authority has been used to pacify all the meetings, all the social discontent with raw force. And now, as the batons are being pried out of their hands, let’s see what happens.”
