An axiom of history is that it can be difficult to perceive paradigm shifts when you’re living through them. Nonetheless, there’s certainly a strong whiff of change in recent events surrounding Belarus, events that broadly reflect just how far we’ve come from the West’s ‘end of history’ moment after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Analysis

In auditing the recent Belarus affair, the first major point that stands out is just how brazen the ‘state-sponsored hijacking’ and arrest of blogger Roman Protasevich actually was. Protasevich, a journalist and longstanding opposition figure who was deemed a terrorist by the Belarusian authorities in 2020, took a plane bound from Athens to Vilnius, two EU capitals. Ultimately neither his democratic credentials nor his physical presence in the EU were enough to save him from the Belarusian security services, and now he finds himself in a prison back home faced with a 15-year sentence.

Protasevich’s ordeal constitutes a serious diplomatic black eye for the European Union, and the bloc’s subsequent outrage despite its evident failure to protect activists within its own territory smacks of hollow rhetoric – an accusation that Brussels is no stranger to.

It’s not difficult to parse Minsk’s though process here. The decision to nab Roman Protasevich stems from a belief that neither the European Union nor its allies in the democratic world have the political will or ability to create meaningful consequences. In other words, the chilling effect that Protasevich’s arrest will have on the opposition movement in Belarus is, at least so far as the Lukashenko regime is concerned, a boon that’s worth enduring any punishment that Brussels can (or is willing to) dish out.

The EU attempts to mete out punishment

EU policymakers are now working on their response, with a full package of sanctions expected sometime in July. Brussels has already suspended flights by EU carriers through Belarusian airspace, and new targeted sanctions on top figures of the Lukashenko regime and their associated corporate entities have already been hinted at (the EU already sanctioned Alexander Lukashenko and 87 other individuals in the government following last year’s protests). But there’s already considerable pressure for sanctions to go beyond regime figures and start targeting key sectors of the Belarusian economy.

Here Brussels won’t have a lot to work with, as the Belarusian economy is still over overwhelmingly linked to Russia, which absorbed over 46% of Belarusian exports in 2019 and continues to provide generous subsidies on crude oil exports that are in turn refined within Belarus and sold on internationally, generating as much as $13 billion in revenue every year. On the other hand, the EU is the final destination for approximately 24% of Belarusian exports. Early indications suggest that potash will be targeted for sanctions, as it is Belarus’ top export to the EU and is dominated by state-owned players. Belarus is the third-largest potash producer in the world, and accounts for around 25% of EU demand.