As Alexander Lukashenko ties his political future to Vladimir Putin and Russia’s wartime economy, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya argues that many Belarusians are waiting for a Ukrainian victory to challenge his grip on power.
As Lukashenko tried to ban even her red lipstick from prison, Maryja Kalesnikava describes why she refused exile and chose an 11-year sentence instead.
The best way forward for Belarus is an often misunderstood but ultimately promising strategy known as “Finlandization” – a policy of strict neutrality.
The Lukashenko regime in Minsk’s move against a university in Lithuania looks like part of an authoritarian playbook that Europe has already named, documented and still not fully learned how to answer.
At the start of last year, all 27 EU member states were signed up to the Ottawa Convention, banning the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of anti-personnel mines. Now Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Finalnd have withdrawn — with silence from Brussels.
The EU should swiftly call Lukashenko’s bluff, for the sake of its own political legitimacy, as much as that of the embattled democratic movement in Belarus.
All EU ambassadors are returning to Minsk in a bid to improve deteriorating relations with Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenko, in power for the past 18 years.
Belarus has freed two political prisoners – former presidential candidate Sannikov and his aide – in a bid to mend EU relations.
Influential. Investigative. Independent. EUobserver is a online non-profit news outlet reporting on the European Union.
A former officer in the ‘Diamond’ – Lukashenko’s elite bodyguard – who lives in exile in the EU, says he “cannot remain indifferent” to the brutality of the regime.
Belarus’ future nuclear plant, situated just 50km from Vilnius, sits on a fault line which saw a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in 1909.
Money from the London-based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has been distributed to individuals connected to Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko, according to a career politician in the regime.
The EU in March blacklisted 29 Belarusian companies, but the measures are a drop in the ocean in terms of Belarus-EU economic relations.
Influential. Investigative. Independent. EUobserver is a online non-profit news outlet reporting on the European Union.
Influential. Investigative. Independent. EUobserver is a online non-profit news outlet reporting on the European Union.
Slovenia denies getting a Belarusian firm off an EU blacklist for the sake of a few million euros. But France says it did.
Belarusian oil product and fertilizer firms, and specifically Belaruskali, should be banned from operating in EU countries.
Influential. Investigative. Independent. EUobserver is a online non-profit news outlet reporting on the European Union.
Influential. Investigative. Independent. EUobserver is a online non-profit news outlet reporting on the European Union.
Influential. Investigative. Independent. EUobserver is a online non-profit news outlet reporting on the European Union.