Washington And Brussels Play Good Cop, Bad Cop On Belarus

Recent moves by Washington and Brussels show diplomatic tracks heading in opposite directions with regard to Belarus, highlighting a growing divide between the allies on how to deal with Europe's security.

On one side of the Atlantic Ocean, the United States is engaging Minsk and its authoritarian ruler, Aleksandr Lukashenko, by easing sanctions in exchange for the release of political prisoners, including 123 last weekend.

That contrasts starkly with what's happening in Brussels, where European Union officials are still adding to their restrictive measures targeting Lukashenko, a steadfast ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

New Line Of Communication

Supporters of the moves by US President Donald Trump's administration to open up dialogue with Minsk say it's a clear strategy to open another line of communication with the Kremlin, which has relied on Belarus's support in the war against Ukraine.

"Your president [Lukashenko] has a long history with President Putin and has the ability to advise him. This is very useful in this situation," Trump's envoy to Belarus, John Coale, said after holding talks with Lukashenko that lead to the prisoner release, noting the Belarus leader might be able to change Putin's mind in the context of the ongoing talks to end the war in Ukraine.

"Naturally, President Putin may accept some advice and not others. This is a way to facilitate the process," he added.

But critics fear the dismantling of years of coordinated pressure against a country that has witnessed a brutal, sometimes deadly, crackdown on civil society. Even limited diplomatic contact, they say, could give legitimacy to Lukashenko's regime.

"For the EU, copying Washington’s approach would be strategically misguided: unlike the US, the EU shares a border with Belarus, faces immediate security risks from Russia’s military presence there, and has already invested significantly in supporting Belarusian democratic forces," said Giselle Bosse, a professor and Jean Monnet chair at Maastricht University.

"What might serve short-term US diplomatic goals would therefore undermine the EU’s long-term security and values-based strategy," she wrote recently.

Lifting Of US Sanctions

Trump surprised many by speaking to Lukashenko by phone in August just ahead of a summit with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Alaska.

That was followed by the lifting of sanctions on Belarus national air carrier Belavia, meaning the US government was allowing all US entities and individuals to do business with the airline. At the same time, Minsk announced the release of pardoned and released 31 Ukrainian citizens who had been held in Belarus, one of a series of prisoner releases over the past year.

The most recent prisoner release was preceded by an announcement that Washington was lifting sanctions on Belarus’s lucrative fertilizer exports -- including its biggest company, Belaruskali -- which provide major source of income to Lukashenko’s regime.

For Lukashenko, long criticized and isolated by the West as a dictator and staunch Putin ally, Trump's call represented a diplomatic breakthrough.

Some criticized the call fearing it gave Lukashenko his first step back toward the international diplomatic stage.

But Trump supporters and some analysts applauded the move, saying engagement was needed after years of trying to isolate Belarus.

Mark Episkopos, a research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and adjunct professor of history at Marymount University in Virginia, lauded the December 13 release of prisoners and overall engagement with Minsk, calling it "necessary work in driving US-Belarus normalization forward step by step."

"The best and only viable way to address these challenges is through sustained dialogue with Belarus, not by pushing for a change in government or punishing Minsk until it cuts ties with Moscow," he wrote recently.

'Europe's Last Dictator'

Long considered a pariah and dubbed "Europe's last dictator," Lukashenko has walked a tightrope between Russia -- which is Belarus's largest trading partner -- and the West.

After the 2020 presidential election in which Lukashenko claimed victory, opposition groups declared the results a sham and sparked weeks of massive protests. Lukashenko's security forces responded with a brutal crackdown, arresting over 30,000 people, many of whom reported torture and ill-treatment in custody.

The crackdown pushed most opposition politicians to leave Belarus fearing for their safety and freedom. Meanwhile, many Western governments have refused to recognize the results of the 2020 election and do not consider Lukashenko to be the country's legitimate leader.

While Brussels has targeted the country and its leadership both for human rights abuses, siding with Russia in the war against Ukraine, and for pushing migrants from Asia and Africa onto EU borders, the EU via unanimity on December 15 added three more criteria for targeting the Lukashenko regime.

Belarusians can now be sanctioned if they are deemed to have planned or been engaged in “foreign information manipulation and interference” in the EU.

They can also be sanctioned for actions targeted “at the functioning of democratic institutions, economic activities or services of public interest of the EU” and finally it will be a sanctionable offense to enter EU territory unauthorized.

The last criteria is the most crucial one as it is a direct EU response to the weather balloons normally used by Belarus for counterfeit cigarette smuggling that entered Lithuania and interfered with its air traffic in recent months.

Lithuanian officials recently told RFE/RL that a total of 315 unauthorized balloons have entered the country from Belarus since June, peaking in October with 71 airspace incursions. The incursions have forced the two biggest Lithuanian airports in Kaunas and Vilnius to temporarily shut down 15 times this year alone, affecting over 320 flights and 45,000 passengers.

According to several EU officials that RFE/RL has been in contact with, the bloc will renew all its Belarus sanctions in the coming weeks as all 27 EU member states agree that the sanctions should be maintained.

Vilnius also is expected to suggest more sanctions in early January on those responsible for the balloon incursions, while more economic sanctions on Minsk are expected to be included in the EU’s 20th sanctions package on Russia, which is set to be approved around the fourth anniversary of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in late February.

When asked after a foreign affairs meeting in Brussels this week whether the EU would consider following the US example and ease sanctions, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas rejected the suggestion.

“As long as this war is going on and Belarus is clearly helping Russia in its war efforts and also hybrid attacks against European member states, our position has been very clear. We are putting more sanctions on Belarus and to pressure them into not using these tactics against us. So, raising the cost for them to change the calculus,” Kallas said.

Several EU diplomats speaking on the condition of anonymity were also adamant that the US moves didn’t affect Brussels’ thinking at all, with one adding that “the US can give whatever sanctions relief they want, [but] without the EU playing ball, nothing will happen for a landlocked country like Belarus.”

Another argued that because the US doesn’t border Belarus, it does not “sense the same threat perception as Europe,” while conceding that Washington likely sees Lukashenko as a useful conduit to influence Russian President Vladimir Putin as part of the US quest to broker peace between Moscow and Kyiv.