It’s Time to Roll Back Sanctions on Putin's Ally in Belarus

To paraphrase Leon Trotsky on war, we may not be interested in a re-division of Europe, but it’s interested in us. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine twice in a decade to reassert the sphere of control Moscow lost in 1991, and although things have hardly gone to plan for him, a new de facto separation is underway.

In Ukraine, that’s visibly the case, as artillery and trenches carve new lines through the steppe. Less obvious is that some of Moscow’s other former possessions are getting forced from the gray zones they’ve inhabited between east and west since the Soviet collapse. This isn’t necessarily a development they want. It certainly isn’t in the economic or security interests of the European Union. But it’s happening.

The uncomfortable reality is that Western policymakers are, in some cases, unwittingly helping Putin with this project. They’re still pursuing policies – in particular sanctions - whose original purposes are no longer achievable and are now forcing targeted governments into an ever-deeper dependency on Moscow.

Take Belarus. This country of about 9 million people borders not just Russia, but also Ukraine, two Baltic states and Poland. It also abuts the so-called Suwalki Gap – a slender, 65-kilometer (40 miles) corridor along the Polish-Lithuanian border that offers the shortest potential route for Putin’s troops to reach the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, while cutting the Balts off from NATO reinforcement.

So, both for defensive and offensive contingencies, Belarus is of critical strategic importance. It’s also the model for the subservient union of Russian states that Putin wants to build.

On Jan. 26, President Alexander Lukashenko held a transparently sham election, awarding himself 86.8% of the vote and the response was predictable: more sanctions. Lukashenko and his associates have been subject to EU trade restrictions since at least 2020, when he crushed mass protests over his theft of the previous presidential vote. The EU penalties intensified dramatically after Belarus allowed Putin to use its territory to attack Kyiv in 2022.

At the time, the goal of these sanctions was laudable: To force Lukashenko to hold fresh and genuine elections, release political prisoners (more than 1,200 remain in prison), stop pushing migrants across his western borders, stop helping Putin with his unprovoked war on Ukraine and generally end the now seven-term president’s tyrannous behavior. Yet the attempt failed. He remains in power, with all meaningful independent media and political opposition crushed, jailed or in exile.

Polling stations were reportedly empty at the weekend, belying the official 86% turnout, because many Belarusians understood the exercise was a charade. At the same time, they didn’t protest, because they knew from last time what that would bring: beatings, incarceration and torture. They also know that were they somehow to succeed in toppling the regime, within hours Russian tanks would impose a new leader who doesn’t even try – as Lukashenko still does - to maintain a semblance of sovereignty, or to keep Belarusian troops out of Ukraine.