Dictator Of Belarus
Since 1994, Belarus has the same President. Alexander Lukashenko. He is in his 6th term as the President. Recently, in August 2020, presidential elections were held in Belarus. The President won the election. But this election, and every election since 1994, were all deemed to be unfair because of election fraud.
It means that the current President of Belarus, is a dictator. Infamously, known as the Last Dictator of Europe. But because nearly all the countries surrounding Belarus are democracies, the citizens of Belarus are agitated. They want to bring down the dictator. Recently, there were protests by thousands of people. But the police arrested thousands. And jailed the protestors. And most of the opposition leaders are either in jails or have fled the country.
Seeing this happen, in response, the European Union and the USA, declared economic sanctions against the Lukashenko government. These sanctions weren’t very significant. Until May 2021. When a shocking incident took place. As per the European standards. What happened was that a flight from Greece was flying to Lithuania in this flight, was Raman Pratasyevich, a Belarusian blogger and political activist. He had written against the Belarusian government often.
When the flight flew over Belarus, the Belarusian authorities diverted that flight and made it land in Minsk. So that the blogger could be arrested. The flight flying between two foreign countries was diverted and forcing it to land in their country is no less than a hijacking. It can be considered a terrorist act. The European Union called it Air Piracy, and after this incident, banned Belarus’s airline from all the European Union airports. In fact, banning it from even the European Union airspaces.
Additionally, the top commodities exported by Belarus to the European Union like petroleum product, potash (a fertiliser) were also banned. The European Investment Bank stopped funding the projects in Belarus. Several smaller steps were also taken along with these. That led to Belarus being economically isolated. This caused a huge shock to the Belarusian economy. In 2020, about 50% of Belarus’ total petroleum products exports was exported to the European Union and the UK.
Now it has come to a complete halt. And as I said, Belarus is a landlocked country, if it had access to the sea, it could have continued exporting to the other countries easily. But being banned from the air space as well. And stopping exports like this, caused Belarus’ economy to come to a standstill.
