Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto on Monday became the first senior official from a European Union country to visit Belarus since the authoritarian Belarusian regime imposed a harsh crackdown on the opposition in 2020.
His trip came as the EU is expected to consider a new sanctions package against Belarus. The EU has already imposed a series of sanctions on the country, both over the crackdown that followed mass protests against the 2020 presidential election, widely viewed as rigged, and over Belarus hosting Russian troops during the war in Ukraine.
Belarusian political analyst Valery Karbalevich said that as a result of the sanctions, Minsk is experiencing “enormous” difficulties with the export of potash fertilizers, a key source of income, and petroleum products.
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“And the continuation of the war (in Ukraine) is tightening the economic noose around the neck of Belarus,” Karbalevich said. “The Belarusian authorities are doing everything possible to alleviate this pressure.”
Belarus has not deployed troops to Ukraine, but Russian soldiers based there have crossed the border into northern Ukraine.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto was the first European Union representative to visit Belarus since the Lukashenko regime’s crackdown on the opposition in 2020.
After the 2020 election that gave authoritarian Alexander Lukashenko a new term, mass protests broke out and persisted for weeks, the largest and longest wave of unrest since Lukashenko came to power in 1994.
He unleashed a brutal crackdown on protesters; more than 35,000 people were arrested and thousands were beaten by the police. Among those arrested was human rights activist Ales Bialiatski, one of last year’s Nobel Peace Prize laureates. He is on trial and faces 12 years in prison if convicted.
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Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who ran against Lukashenko in 2020 and left the country days after the election, condemned Szijjarto’s visit.
“At a time when a Nobel laureate is on trial, journalists are tortured, Russian soldiers are being trained before going to fight in Ukraine, such actions are unacceptable,” he said.
In closing remarks at his closed-door trial, Bialiatsky said Monday that Lukashenko had made “a political decision to crush and destroy Belarus’ civil society,” according to the Viasna human rights center he founded.
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Bialiatski and two other Viasna figures are accused of tax evasion, smuggling and financing activities that undermine public order, charges related to Viasna’s payment of the legal fees of people he considers political prisoners.
