Cyprus Mail 21 June 2021 - by Reuters News Service
The European Union will impose travel bans and asset freezes on 86 Belarusian individuals and companies on Monday and is preparing economic sanctions that Austria said would “tighten the thumbscrews” on President Alexander Lukashenko.
Outraged at the forced landing of a Ryanair passenger plane in Minsk on May 23 to arrest a dissident journalist, EU foreign ministers will blacklist transport, defence and air traffic officials, EU diplomats and officials said.
“Today we will approve the package of new sanctions, which is a wider package, about 86 people and entities,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told reporters as he detailed a fourth round of measures before a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg.
With Lukashenko so far impervious to foreign pressure, EU states are also soon set to impose economic sanctions on Belarus’ financial, oil, tobacco and potash sectors, after a provisional deal was agreed on Friday.
Belarus is one of the world’s top exporters of potash, used in fertilisers. The EU imported 1.2 billion euros’ ($1.5 billion) worth of chemicals including potash from Belarus last year, as well as more than 1 billion euros’ worth of crude oil and related products such as fuel and lubricants. Belarus also relies on loans from European commercial and development banks.
“We have to tighten the thumbscrews after this callous action of state air piracy,” Austria’s Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg told reporters.
“We want to hit the state-affiliated economic sector, those responsible, not the people in Belarus, who are suffering anyway.”
After 27 years in power, Lukashenko is accused of rigging the presidential election last August and then imprisoning pro-democracy protesters.
The forced landing of the Ryanair flight last month to arrest Roman Protasevich and his student girlfriend Sofia Sapega, who were on board, has galvanized an often divided EU into action.
Lukashenko says Protasevich was organising a rebellion.
