LONDON (Reuters) – Britain slapped sanctions on Belarus’s potash and petroleum product exports on Monday to heap pressure on President Alexander Lukashenko by trying to reduce state revenues and target those close to him.
The British sanctions, which prohibited the purchase of transferable securities and money-market instruments issued by the Belarusian state and its state-owned banks, are the latest sanctions imposed by the West over Lukashenko’s crackdown.
The package includes measures to prevent Belarusian air carriers from overflying or landing in the United Kingdom and a prohibition on the provision of technical assistance to President Lukashenko’s fleet of luxury aircraft.
“These sanctions demonstrate that the UK will not accept Lukashenko’s actions since the fraudulent election,” Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said. “The Lukashenko regime continues to crush democracy and violate human rights in Belarus.”
“The products of Lukashenko’s state-owned industries will not be sold in the UK, and our aerospace companies will not touch his fleet of luxury aircraft.”
So far, western sanctions have done little to persuade Lukashenko, in power in his former Soviet state since 1994, to change course.
Britain said the United States was also announcing new measures on Monday, one year since the contested Aug. 9 presidential election.
The Belarus Potash Company (BPC) exports potash — Minsk’s main foreign currency earner — mostly via the Baltic port of Klaipeda in EU-member Lithuania.
“These measures represent a significant additional step in bringing pressure to bear on the Lukashenko regime,” Britain’s foreign ministry said. “They are carefully targeted to build pressure on Lukashenko, state institutions and those around him to change behaviour, while minimising, as far as possible, any unintended consequences on the wider population in Belarus.”
(Reporting by Elizabeth Piper and William James; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)
