New EU and US sanctions against Belarus in force

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On the sanctions list: the Belarusian airline Belavia

Photo: Maxim Shemetov / REUTERS

In the refugee conflict with Belarus, the European Union's new sanctions have come into force.

A list with a total of 28 responsible persons and organizations was published in the Official Journal of the EU on Thursday.

The EU accuses them of helping Belarus smuggle migrants to Europe's external borders.

The USA, Great Britain and Canada also announced new sanctions in consultation with the EU.

Eleven companies are on the EU's sanctions list, including the Belarusian airline Belavia and the Syrian charter company Cham Wings, as well as hotels and tour operators.

Your assets in the EU are now frozen, 17 high-ranking political leaders in Belarus are also being banned from entering the country.

Because of its support for Lukashenko, the EU also sanctioned three other Belarusian state-owned industrial companies.

These include the petrochemical company Belorusneft, the vehicle tire manufacturer Belshina and the nitrogen compound manufacturer Grodno Azot.

With the help of those affected, the Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko is said to have smuggled migrants specifically to the EU's external borders in order to retaliate against previous EU sanctions.

Minsk rejects the allegations.

Belarus immediately announced tough countermeasures in the direction of Brussels: "In response, we will (...) take tough, asymmetrical, but appropriate measures," said the Belarusian Foreign Ministry.

Minsk complained, among other things, that the punitive measures also affected companies that had nothing to do with the current crisis affecting migrants.

The US imposed sanctions on 20 government officials and twelve organizations and companies, as the Treasury Department announced in Washington.

Lukashenko's son Dmitri is also affected.

Three planes were classified as "blocked possession".

The Ministry of Finance also imposed restrictions on new Belarusian government bonds in the primary and secondary markets.

Sanctions also against system-preserving branches of industry

Those affected "enabled the regime to smuggle migrants into the European Union (EU), participated in the ongoing suppression of human rights and democracy, and supported the regime financially," said the US Department.

Potash companies in the fertilizer industry are also affected by the US sanctions.

The sector with its strong export business is one of the pillars of the Lukashenko system.

The Belarusian opposition had repeatedly called for sanctions to be issued against such system-preserving branches of industry in order to bring the power apparatus in Minsk to its knees.

Lukashenko had always downplayed the previous EU and US sanctions.

He had pointed out that Russia in particular, but also China, kept Belarus economically alive.

The EU foreign ministers had already decided in mid-November to tighten the sanctions against Belarus.

Thus, for the first time, the EU is also making "the instrumentalization of migrants for political purposes" a criminal offense.

It is now the EU’s fifth package of sanctions against Belarus.

Since the beginning of the year, according to the EU Commission, almost 8,000 migrants have come to the EU via Belarus, of which almost 4,300 have come to Lithuania, around 3,200 to Poland and more than 400 to Latvia.

kfr / AFP / dpa