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State hijacking, why is the EU postponing the hard line against Lukashenko?

State hijacking, why is the EU postponing the hard line against Lukashenko?

On the 3 billion and on any other sanctions against entities and personalities that finance the Lukashenko regime, the EU Council has postponed everything. The article by Tino Oldani for Italy Today

"The economic package of 3 billion in investments, ready to go from the EU to Belarus, remains frozen until Belarus becomes democratic". This is how Ursula Von der Leyen, president of the EU Commission, reacted to the state air hijacking carried out by the Belarusian dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko, 66, to arrest one of his opponents, the journalist Roman Protasevich, 26. Strong words those of Von der Leyen, at least apparently, pronounced before the European Council of Heads of State and Government meeting in Brussels to discuss climate change and migration, but forced to cancel his agenda to agree on the European response to the yet another arrogance of Lukaschenko, the dictator in power in Minsk for 27 years thanks to the repeated electoral fraud of a fake democracy, the last of which dates back to the elections of August 2020.

The European Union summit was perfectly informed of these frauds, so much so that last year, in the middle of August, it convened an extraordinary summit to denounce the electoral manipulation that had confirmed Lukashenko as president with 80% of the votes, and impose a series of economic sanctions against seven financial entities and 88 members of the Belarusian regime, led by the president-dictator himself. So far, all clear. The same cannot be said, however, of the fact that the European Union, despite the economic sanctions decided last year, had so far planned to donate 3 billion euros to the Lukashenko regime. A generosity, to say the least, inexplicable.

But it gets worse. While most of the media have included the 3 billion block in the "hard line" that the EU would adopt against the Lukashenko regime after the state hijacking, including the introduction of a no-fly zone that provides for the stop of flights to and from Belarus by European airlines and would involve about 2,000 flights a week, a correspondence from Brussels from the Huffington post , signed by Angela Mauro, reveals that, in the final text of the European Council of State, "there is no freezing of 3 billion of European funding for Minsk, although announced by Von der Leyen at the beginning of the works ». An afterthought that is singular to say the least, if we consider the strong words that almost all European leaders had pronounced at the beginning of the proceedings: from Chancellor Angela Merkel, who had asked for the immediate release of the arrested journalist and his partner, to the president of the European Parliament, David Sassoli, who had called for strong measures to show that the European Union is not a "paper tiger".

Unfortunately, instead of strong measures, yet another postponement has come: on the 3 billion and on other possible sanctions against entities and personalities that finance the Lukashenko regime, the European Council has postponed everything to a proposal that will be developed by the representative EU for foreign policy, Josep Borrel. Ditto for the no-fly zone and the isolation of Belarus by land: EU leaders reserve the right to "agree" on the measures to implement them. In fact, an embarrassing reverse, which confirms the existence of deep divisions within the EU on foreign policy, a matter which, like all the others, is conditioned by the unanimous vote of the 27 member countries. Since the Lukashenko summit took place in a climate of total secrecy, where cell phones and digital tools were banned, no indiscretion filtered into the debate. However, it is well known that the Hungarian Prime Minister, Victor Orbàn, has always been a great friend of Lukashenko, and that before the works he was the only one not to say a single word about the plane hijacking, limiting himself to criticizing the European Green deal, of which Hungary does not want to share the costs.

However, the lack of a unanimous vote is not the only cause of the weak European response to Lukashenko's abuse. To carry out the hijacking with a combat Mig26, the Belarusian dictator knew he could count on the support of Vladimir Putin's Russia, of which he has always been a faithful ally. This protection is confirmed by the fact that the Russian foreign minister, Sergej Lavrov, has judged Lukashenko's actions to be "transparent", who will be received by Putin in Sochi next week. Not only. The spokeswoman for the Russian foreign ministry, Maria Zakharova, took the opportunity to recall that a similar hijacking had been caused in 2013 by some European countries to the plane that brought Bolivian President Evo Morales back to Bolivia from Moscow, forcing him to land. in Vienna, on the suspicion that the American wanted Edward Snowden was on board.

It may be displeasing to some to point this out, but this Russian self-confidence, typical of Putin's despotism, has probably been reinforced by some decisions by Merkel and Joe Biden, especially by the latter, who is trying in every way to re-establish normal relations with the Russia, to isolate China. First he lifted the economic sanctions on Nord Stream 2, a gas pipeline strongly supported by Merkel, putting an end to a US veto that had lasted for years, even before Donald Trump's presidency. Then he announced a bilateral summit with Putin, to be held in Switzerland in a month. A diplomatic action of strategic importance between two global powers, with respect to which the European Union, which has neither an army nor a common foreign policy, finds itself like an earthenware pot between two of iron.

The result has been seen: he can use strong words with a dictator-hijacker like Lukashenko, but weak punitive measures, of pure facade. A paper tiger.

Article published on italiaoggi.it


This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/dirottamento-di-stato-perche-ue-rimanda-la-linea-dura-contro-lukashenko/ on Sat, 29 May 2021 05:34:18 +0000.