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“It just came to our attention then. It is blasphemy that a group of Western countries have embarked on the latest sanctions aggression on the day of remembrance and pain, when 80 years ago,” Europe united “with [Adolfo] Hitler’s Germany at the forefront attacked the Soviet Union, “the Belarusian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
According to Minsk, “the retaliatory measures that the European Union forces us to take may also negatively affect the areas of our cooperation and, in the long term, the interests of Western citizens and companies that have taken hostile measures towards our state.”
On Monday, the European Union decided to impose additional sanctions on 78 individuals and eight legal entities for human rights violations in Belarus. They will be subject to an EU visa ban and their assets under EU jurisdiction will be frozen.
Seven people, including Defense Minister Viktor Chrenin and Transport Minister Aliakseja Avramenko, were sentenced to death last month for the landing of a Ryanair liner from Athens to Vilnius in Minsk and the Belarusian opposition blogger. Raman Pratasevic and his girlfriend Vilan, a Russian student. Sofia Sapega – arrest.
Another 71 people will be punished for serious human rights abuses and support for the Minsk regime. Among them are Russian business magnate Mikhail Guceryev, son of President Aliaksandr Lukashenko, Dzmitry and Marti Lily.
The measures envisaged in the four EU sanctions packages announced so far currently apply to a total of 166 natural persons and 15 legal persons.
Belarus has been in crisis for months after the August presidential elections. Lukashenko, who has ruled the country with an iron fist since 1994, has been declared the winner, but the opposition and Western democracies consider the elections rigged.
The United States also extended sanctions to Minsk on Monday; his example was soon followed by the United Kingdom and Canada.
