(THREAD) I am sceptical regarding the personal sanction against Lukashenka and other persons who are responsible for killings, tortures and rapes in #Belarus. Reasons for this:
1) Neither Lukashenka nor his close circle has property (at least that is known to us) in the EU;

2) They also do not travel to the EU for vacations. And when Lukashenka goes to the West as a president for a speech at the UN, he gets a sanctions-waver-pass;
3) His police officials are anyway banned from trips to the West - but first of all by Lukashenka himself.

4) Thinking of the points named above, personal sanctions will mean nothing for Lukashenka, he used to live with them. He will enjoy to point out, how dangerous he is for Europe and how discriminated.

Well, but could export sanctions help?

I don't think so as well. It is already forbidden to sell weapons or police equipment to Belarus. In reality, Belarus buys shock grenades, ammunition for shotguns and other weapons in the EU - we have seen Czech and Polish ammo. They also buy German police cars and water cannons.

How they do this? They are a part of the "Eurasian Economic Union" with RUS, KAZ, ARM and others, and a part of "Union State Russia-Belarus". They can buy all these pieces via Russian, Kazakh, Armenian companies. EU obviously does not control good enough where forbidden goods go.

So what can we do? Except of the obvious step to recognize Sv. Tsikhanouskaya as a president-elect we can introduce really smart sanctions. Belarusian economy is extremely dependent on their transit status. They re-sell a lot of EU goods to Russia. Find these goods and list them.

The next step: Belarusian state avionic industry lives from transit flights Moscow-Kyiv (there are no direct flights). Ban technical maintenance of Belarusian planes. They are all Airbus and Boeing and cannot fly a week without a technical check. This will cost Lukashenka a lot.

The next step: the only real source of currency to Belarus is IT sector. Companies from the EU and the US purchase a lot of services in Belarus and pay in USD or EUR. Ban purchasing IT services in Belarus AND support the IT people from Belarus with issuing EU residents permits.

These three steps would be enough to put Lukashenka on the knee. These sanctions would be really smart - and hit the dictator hard. Not the sanctions that forbid him to travel to Italy what he does not do anyway.

I write this as a person who used to be a Head of Taskforce Sanctions at a German consultancy and was responsible for the area Russian/Belarus/Ukraine/Kazakhstan.

END OF THE THREAD.

@SLagodinsky @ViolavonCramon @ManuelSarrazin @nouripour a bit of my professional expertise as a former Head of Taskforce Sanctions regarding the current situation around Belarus.