The Logic Of Previous Years Is Totally Broken

Why only sanctions can rescue political prisoners.

Radio Liberty recently published a list of lobbyists for the lifting of sanctions. The list is by no means complete, but it is indicative. The lobbyists, of course, are from Belarus.

Thanks to the Radio for the qualified signal. Professionals, no…?

I won't indicate the names of the lobbyists, that's too good for them. In addition, they were and are one hundred percent predictable.

I will try once again, to my great regret, to explain why trade in sanctions is not just bad, but very bad.

It would seem that there was another pendulum pitching, when the West gets tired of its own measures and begins to discuss that "nothing works, but our business suffers." And this moment is the most dangerous for Belarus.

The previous such "pendulum swing" happened in 2015, five years after Lukashenka's obvious loss in the 2010 "elections" organized by him and the brutal dispersal of the peaceful demonstration.

Then the European Union, contrary to its own conditions, there were only three of them, the dictatorship had to fulfill them to normalize relations with the rich West, took no care of its own principles and began to serve its interests, not principles.

The result?

Who doesn't remember?

Recall…

The West began to trade with the Lukashenka regime, including arming it to combat popular outrage in the future.

In 2020, all this business fell on the heads of peaceful Belarusian protests: Canadian water cannons mounted on German and Italian trucks, German police uniforms, including rubber truncheons, Polish stun guns and rubber bullets, Czech stun grenades, weapons made in Germany, Italy, the USA, Austria...

It would seem that it was possible to draw more or less logical conclusions from the history of "pendulum" relations with the Lukashenka regime and this time not to deviate from their own principles-decisions.

However, they begin to look for ways again, detours and not only to help the Lukashenko regime, hopelessly ill and insane.

This is how all the talk about lifting sanctions should be perceived both in the previous periods of unprincipled decisions of democratic countries and now.

Only today, all these familiar maneuvers are many times more dangerous than before. I would even say that they are deadly for the Belarusian state and its citizens.

The previous experience of impunity for crimes against humanity, which the regime has been committing for almost 30 years, has led Lukashenka to throw the pendulum so far away from fear towards even greater crimes and repression that there will be no return even to blatant liberalization.

The logic of previous years is completely broken.

Fear within the regime does not even allow us to think about easing the repression.

Thousands of political prisoners (the exact number of which we do not know, but it is clearly much higher than officially announced), daily arrests, trials and sentences mean that the regime has no red lines left.

Among other things, such hysterical persecution of dissidents means that the regime seeks to achieve the lifting of sanctions not only without releasing all political prisoners, but even without reducing their number, which is necessary to maintain fear in society.

Moreover, the regime is not going to release the most dangerous political prisoners from its point of view. And there are dozens, if not hundreds.

When we hear any proposals for the lifting of sanctions coming from opposition or pseudo-opposition circles, it should be understood that these voluntary aides of the regime call for exchanging the release of several political prisoners, at the discretion of the regime, for the lives of those whom Lukashenka seeks to destroy physically.

It was before that the regime used to kill secretly, now it does it openly and demonstratively, killing during peaceful protest demonstrations, killing in prisons.

The lifting of sanctions will mean the issuance of a license to the Lukashenka regime to kill Siarhei Tsikhanouski, Mikalai Statkevich, Mikalai Autukhovich, Ihar Alinevich, Viktar Babaryka and many others in prisons.

It is possible to resist Lukashenka's mad punishers not by persuasion or lifting sanctions, but only by tougher measures, with all the means of pressure available to the West to release all political prisoners without exception.

Andrei Sannikov, Facebook

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