Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia imposed travel bans on President Alexander Lukashenko and 29 other Belarusian officials on Monday, signalling impatience with the West’s cautious approach by announcing sanctions without waiting for the rest of the EU.
The three small Baltic states have led calls firm measures against Lukashenko, who is accused by opponents and the West of rigging an Aug. 9 election to prolong his 26-year rule.
The sanctions target officials they accuse of having a role in vote-rigging and in violence against protesters since the election. The inclusion of Lukashenko was a prod to other European countries, so far reluctant to back measures against him personally.
Belarus expressed “sincere disappointment” and signalled it would retaliate in kind to what it called “hasty steps”.
“We said that we need peaceful dialogue and agreement between the regime and society, but we see that the regime is not ready for that,” Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said. “We see that we need to move forward and to show an example to other countries.”
The European Union has been working on a list of individuals in Belarus to target with similar sanctions, expected to exclude Lukashenko. Western countries have mostly been cautious, wary of provoking an intervention from Russia.
The three Baltic states are all members of the EU and NATO, and Lithuania and Latvia border Belarus. Lithuania has been hosting Belarusian opposition presidential candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who fled there after the election her supporters say she won.
Tsikhanouskaya will speak to the U.N. Security Council on Friday at Estonia’s invitation, her spokesman said.
Seeking to keep pressure on Lukashenko to step down, Tsikhanouskaya’s team called for students to hold a one-day nationwide boycott of schools and universities on Tuesday to coincide with the start of the new school year.
Via Reuters
