As of: 28.06.2021 5:20 p.m.
Just last week, the EU and other partners decided on new sanctions against Belarus. The government in Minsk is not going to let that go and is now withdrawing its envoy from Brussels.
In response to numerous sanctions by the European Union against the government of Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus recalled its envoy to the EU. This is done for “consultation purposes”, wrote the Belarusian Foreign Ministry on its website. At the same time, the EU representative in Belarus, Dirk Schuebel, will be sent to Brussels. “He should convey to his management the Belarusian position that the pressure and sanctions are unacceptable,” it said. Schuebel had previously been summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He had been given information about specific actions taken in response to measures that “endanger the security, economy and citizens of Belarus”.
In this context, the government in Minsk announced that it would suspend Belarusian participation in the EU’s “Eastern Partnership”. As part of the program, the EU has been promoting common political, social, economic and cultural relationships for more than ten years.
Doubts about the election result and the Ryanair incident
At the beginning of last week, the EU, together with the USA, Canada and Great Britain, imposed further sanctions on Belarus. The Union imposed travel restrictions on eight additional officials, and also froze their credit balances and that of eight “units” – usually companies or organizations. Belarus immediately condemned the sanctions and threatened retaliation.
The punitive measures are on the one hand a reaction to the controversial re-election of Lukashenko, who has ruled authoritarian since 1994, in August last year and the crackdown on the subsequent mass protests by the opposition. Second, the EU responded to an incident on May 23. At that time, a Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius was intercepted by a Belarusian fighter jet because of an alleged bomb threat and diverted to Minsk for landing. There the oppositionist Roman Protassewitsch and his partner Sofia Sapega, who were sitting in the machine, were arrested. After several weeks in detention, Protassevich is now under house arrest, according to a media report.