EU sanctions designed to punish veteran Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko for a sweeping political crackdown will leave him largely unscathed and able to continue financing the economy and his security forces, rating agencies and analysts say.
The European Union imposed wide-ranging sanctions on Belarus last week in response to Lukashenko’s grounding in May of a Ryanair plane flying over Belarus and the arrest of an opposition journalist and his girlfriend who were on board, a move some EU politicians likened to air piracy.
The EU has also criticised Lukashenko’s suppression of opposition protests, jailing of political rivals and strangling of critical media.
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