#Moneybag biden license#

Shakutsin, meanwhile, is reportedly “one of the persons who benefited most from the privatisation during Lukashenko’s tenure,” as the EU noted. Varabei is also co-owner of Bremino Group, a major logistics operator that has received tax breaks and other regime support. Washington, for its part, should begin by sanctioning Aliaksandr Shakutsin and Mikalai Varabei, two businessmen Brussels sanctioned back in December 2020, saying they are both “benefiting from and supporting the regime.” Varabei’s company Interservice is Belarus’s largest private petrochemical exporter and has expanded rapidly since 2012, not least thanks to a Lukashenko decree transferring state assets to him to create an oil refinery. Assistant Secretary of State David Kramer has argued, targeting these “moneybags” and their companies could help “water down the thin ice on which Lukashenko stands.” The dictator has enabled them to boost their business interests in return for support to his regime, including by allegedly acting as straw men to hold large chunks of the Lukashenko family’s fortune. It could start by heeding the opposition’s call to sanction Lukashenko’s “wallets,” as it calls the wealthy Belarusian businesspeople close to Lukashenko. To make the regime pay a real price, the West should go after Lukashenko’s money.

Indeed, the West’s “nine months of wet noodle international responses to repressive moves since the stolen #Belarus election,” as a former Canadian ambassador to Ukraine, Roman Waschuk, put it, may have helped convince Lukashenko he could get away with the hijacking in the first place.

#Moneybag biden license#

Lukashenko (and other authoritarians the world over, who will surely be watching closely) would likely see such a response as a mere slap on the wrist-a license to keep acting with impunity. But those kinds of sanctions are mainly symbolic. Sanctioning the security, judicial, and other officials responsible for hijacking the plane and mistreating Protasevich would be a good start. Most important, of course, is the plight of the Belarusian people, who continue to face extraordinary repression at the hands of Lukashenko’s brutal regime. global leadership, stand up for human rights, and defend the liberal rules-based order against authoritarian threats. response will test the Biden administration’s promises to revitalize trans-Atlantic relations, restore U.S. As the European Parliament president said after the hijacking, a “strong, immediate, and unified” EU response is necessary “to show that the union is not a paper tiger”-that it can act decisively on the world stage to protect its interests and values. The Biden administration is also coordinating with European allies to develop targeted sanctions against Lukashenko regime officials and will craft a new executive order expanding the administration’s authority to sanction “elements of the regime, its support network, and those that support corruption, the abuse of human rights, and attacks on democracy.” The White House likewise said it will suspend a 2019 air services agreement with Belarus and discourage travel to or through Belarus. In addition to banning Belarusian airliners and calling on EU-based carriers to avoid Belarus, the European Union says it will also sanction those responsible for the hijacking and impose targeted economic sanctions to squeeze the Lukashenko regime’s finances. To be effective, the Western response must go beyond symbolic sanctions by inflicting real pressure on the regime while finding tangible ways to help the Belarusian people. The problem is that minor reprisals are unlikely to impress Belarusian dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko. The EU and United States are rightly developing various new sanctions after Belarusian authorities hijacked Ryanair flight 4978 traveling between Athens and Vilnius, Lithuania, on May 23 in order to arrest Roman Protasevich, an independent Belarusian journalist who had fled the regime but was onboard the flight. The European Union’s ban of the Belarusian state-owned airline from its territory, which went into effect overnight last Friday, is just the latest punitive measure by the West against Minsk.