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According to him, it is “important for the Austrian authorities that the sanctions are not affected. [Baltarusijos] citizens ”with whom Vienna is“ engaged in a very intense dialogue ”. Other EU Member States do not support Austria’s position.
As another diplomat put it, the working group that drafted the sectoral sanctions against Belarus received a report that more than 90 percent of all money Belarus has borrowed from EU countries goes to Austria.
The fourth package of sanctions is scheduled to be adopted on June 21. during a meeting of EU Foreign Ministers. Sector sanctions will be included in the fifth package.
Following the incident with a Ryanair plane in Belarus, the preparation process accelerated.
In April 2021, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz met with Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Cichanouskaya in Vienna. After the meeting, he called Russian President Vladimir Putin. The situation in Belarus was also mentioned during the conversation.
Kurzas is believed to have raised the issue of negotiations between the government and the opposition, as well as Moscow’s possible influence on Aliaksandr Lukashenko to initiate such a dialogue.
Andreas Schieder, the head of the SPO (Austrian Social Democratic Party) delegation, criticized the EU. Instead of supporting the democratic opposition in Belarus and lobbying, the Austrian government, he said, was determined to bail out the banks instead of defending human rights and democracy. The Lukashenko regime must not avoid harsh economic sanctions, the politician is convinced.
Belarus has been protesting against Lukashenko, who has ruled the country for almost 27 years, since August 9. Raman Pratasevičius, a blogger who flew on the plane, co-founded the Belarusian opposition channel Nexta on the Telegram platform, which Minsk considers an extremist, and his friend, Sofia, a Russian citizen studying in Vilnius, was detained at the airport.
European Union ambassadors agreed on Wednesday to impose sanctions on 78 other Belarusian individuals and seven legal entities, diplomats said.
The sanctions will be imposed on Belarus on May 23 after the forced landing of a European Ryanair passenger plane flying from Athens to Vilnius in Minsk.
Seven people on the sanctions list are directly involved in the incident, and 71 people will be sanctioned as a result of the Belarusian government’s broader campaign against the opposition, diplomats said.
The measures are to be formally adopted on Monday, during a meeting of EU foreign ministers.
The authoritarian President of Belarus, A. Lukashenko, provoked international outrage by ordering the dispatch of a fighter jet to take over the passenger liner. In response, the European Union has already banned Belavia, the national airline of Belarus, from entering its airspace and urged European companies not to fly into Belarusian airspace.
Brussels is also currently preparing new sanctions on important sectors of the Belarusian economy. Potential targets include fertilizer production and bond sales in Europe.
The EU had already blacklisted 88 people, including Lukashenko and his son, and seven companies. They are subject to an asset freeze and visa ban due to the brutal crackdown on protests that followed last August’s elections.
After the elections in which Lukashenko, 9.3 million. Having ruled Belarus with an iron fist for more than a quarter of a century, it has secured a sixth term, and Belarus has been rocked by unprecedented protests for several months. The Belarusian opposition and the West consider the election rigged.
Lukashenko, backed by Russia, is still not paying attention to the effects of the pressure.
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