EU leaders are being urged to tell Moscow not to meddle in Belarus when they hold an emergency meeting to discuss the unprecedented street protests facing “Europe’s last dictator”, Alexander Lukashenko.
As tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Minsk for the largest rally in the country’s recent history, the president of the European council, Charles Michel, invited the EU’s 27 heads of state and government to an extraordinary meeting by video conference on Wednesday. “The people of Belarus have the right to decide on their future and freely elect their leader,” Michel tweeted. “Violence against protesters is unacceptable and cannot be allowed.”
The decision to call an EU summit – an idea deemed unlikely in Brussels just a week ago – reflects the rapid pace of events in cities across Belarus, after Lukashenko urged Vladimir Putin to save his regime over the weekend.
Lithuania’s foreign minister, Linas Linkevičius, one of the most active EU voices on Belarus, told the Guardian that European leaders needed to send a strong message to the Kremlin against military intervention in Belarus, while voicing doubts that it was desired by Moscow.
“I hope it’s not realistic, I hope it will not happen, but I cannot exclude, I cannot deny because it is publicly discussed, and definitely we should keep this in mind and send a very clear message that it is not tolerable if Russia decides to do that.”
The EU does not see military intervention by Russia as a likely outcome for now.
Referring to protests in Russia’s far east that have rattled Kremlin elites, Linkevičius added any intervention would be “very complicated” domestically for the Russian government.
“The European Union voice in the level of heads of state could be important, because we see that now the de facto leadership of Belarus is at a crossroads, they are hesitating, thinking, contemplating what they can do.”
ProfileWho is Alexander Lukashenko?
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Born in August 1954 in Kopys, Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko has served as president of Belarus since the establishment of the office in July 1994. On his initial election, Lukashenko set about establishing an effective dictatorship, sustained by shamelessly rigged elections.
Over the years, Lukashenko has offered his people a sort of Soviet-lite system that prizes tractor production and grain harvests over innovation and political freedoms, and the key part of his political offer has always been political and economic stability.
Lukashenko tried to push this line again into the run-up to 2020’s disputed presidential vote, painting Belarus as an island of stability in a world buffeted by economic crises, political unrest and coronavirus. But the scale of discontent has shown that for many Belarusians, this messaging will no longer work.
The 2020 elections have been described as the deepest crisis he has faced in his career, and in order to secure his supposedly crushing victory, Lukashenko required what appears to be some of the most brazen vote-rigging in recent European history. He appears to have subsequently forced his main opponent, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, into exile.
After the election, in a congratulatory message, Vladimir Putin urged Lukashenko to consider further economic and legal integration with Russia, which the opposition has warned would undermine Belarus’s sovereignty.
Lukashenko was “the main source of instability now”, said the Lithuanian foreign minister. “He is desperately looking for a way out, not for the country, but for himself … And by acting like this, it’s very difficult to predict what he is going to do.
“The government has calmed down the repression … It was a good step, but they’re still not ready for any talks,” he said, urging Belarusian officials to choose between Lukashenko and the Belarusian people: “The moment of truth is coming and coming very fast.”
On Monday Donald Trump weighed in, describing it as a “terrible situation”. He added: “We will be following it very closely.”
EU officials said the situation was evolving quickly as record numbers of people took part in weekend rallies. The summit is billed as a moment to send a message of solidarity to the people of Belarus.
“The sheer numbers clearly show that the Belarusian population wants change, and wants it now. The EU stands by them,” said the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, who also called for a “thorough and transparent investigation” into widely reported abuses by Belarusian state security, “in order to hold those responsible to account”.
Joerg Forbrig, the director for central and eastern Europe at the German Marshall Fund thinktank, said: “What we have seen in the last 24 hours or a little more is obviously a completely new dynamic. The EU needs to take this to a higher level.”
He added: “The EU needs to make it very clear to Russia that there are ways of resolving this peacefully. It needs to make it absolutely clear that the Russian appearance in this situation, or even an invasion in Belarus of some sort, would carry consequences.” The analyst suggested the EU needed to step in with an offer of conducting dialogue that includes Russia, via the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
The OSCE, a body that counts EU member states and Russia as members, said it had not been invited to monitor the latest elections in Belarus.
The German government, which currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, on Monday called for a “national dialogue” between the government and opposition to overcome the crisis. The German government’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, suggested the OSCE could play a role with “a review of the election”. Describing the mass demonstrations across Belarus as impressive and moving, Seibert said: “These people should know that Europe stands by them.”
EU foreign ministers agreed last Friday to start work on sanctioning Belarusian officials responsible for the electoral results it deemed neither free nor fair, as well as those responsible for the bloody crackdown on peaceful demonstrators.
Sanctions are unlikely to be agreed until the end of next week at the earliest. One EU diplomat said the “time-consuming” process of agreeing a list could take at least a month or more.
Borrell will update leaders on progress in drawing up the sanctions list on Wednesday at the summit – only the second held in August in EU history. (The first, in August 2014, was dedicated to Ukraine and the appointment of new EU leaders.)
On Monday the UK foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, added his voice to support sanctions. Raab said the UK did not accept the results of the presidential election and called for an independent investigation “into the flaws that rendered the election unfair, as well as the grisly repression that followed”. He said the UK would “work with our international partners to sanction those responsible, and hold the Belarusian authorities to account”.
The UK is obliged to enforce all EU sanctions until the end of the year under the terms of the Brexit-transition agreement.
Meanwhile the largest political forces in the European parliament – representing 80% of MEPs – called for new and free elections under the supervision of independent monitors. “The 9 August presidential elections were neither free, nor fair, and credible reports point to a victory of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya,” said the statement signed by leaders of the centre-right European People’s party, the Social Democrats, centrist Renew Europe, the Greens and the European Conservatives and Reformists. “We therefore do not recognise Alexander Lukashenko as the re-elected president of Belarus and consider him a persona non grata in the European Union.”
While the European parliament has few foreign policy levers, it can help set the EU agenda. The groups called on the EU to appoint a high representative to Belarus to support a peaceful and democratic transition of power, as well as relaunch EU financial programmes aimed at Belarusian people.