Return move: Belarus Foreign Ministry set to blacklist EU officials


In the wake of the EU’s imposing restriction measures on dozens of Belarus’ top officials, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is introducing its own sanctions list.

“In accordance with the common civilised diplomatic practice, we are not going to publish it,” the MFA statement reads.

According to the ministry, the European Union has moved off its neighbour by sanctioning it.

“Unfortunately, the EU’s policy has fallen into the trap of a designed illusory picture of events in Belarus, where there is allegedly a permanent struggle between ‘good and evil’, in which all means are good, and the role of ‘evil’ is invariably played by the legitimate government,” the MFA press service says.

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The bloc’s further boosting the sanctions might have much more serious consequences, the authors of the statement warn:

“What do we mean? Belarus’ withdrawal from joint programmes and projects with the EU as well as considering the expediency of maintaining diplomatic relations.”

Currently, Belarus and Europe are involved in more than 1,500 joint programmes in various fields, from ecology and education to business and investment.

As reported earlier, European Union leaders agreed to slap sanctions on forty Belarusian officials over the vote rigging and post-election police violence in the country. However, the name of Alyaksandr Lukashenka was not added to the sanctions list that has been published on Friday afternoon. It includes senior police and election officials, e.g. Interior Minister Yury Karayeu, Public Security Police Chief Alyaksandr Barsukou, Dzmitry Balaba, Commander of the Special Purpose Police Unit of Minsk (OMON), Lidziya Yarmoshyna, Chairperson of the Belarusian Central Election Commission, Valery Vakulchyk, ex-Head of the State Security Committee (KGB), and others.

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