Is the West hypocritical in blaming Belarus for a humanitarian crisis when sanctions have hurt the lives of millions?

European Union foreign ministers arrived in Brussels on Monday (29 November) to extend sanctions placed on Belarus last year following the brutal repression of opponents of the encumbered Lukashenko regime, writes Louis Auge.

This decision followed the first high-level meeting between Brussels and Minsk since the beginning of the crisis on the EU's eastern border. Belarus' authoritarian leader has been accused of manipulating a “manufactured migrant crisis” to threaten the security of the bloc. These actions have come amid serious EU concern over the deaths of refugees stranded in camps and freezing temperatures, as well as Russian troops gathering on Berlarus’s and Ukraine’s borders.

Liz Truss, the UK foreign secretary, urged Putin this weekend to intervene in the crisis as Belarus is seen now as an unruly enemy of the UK, EU, and US. With the country isolated from European energy and investments, Putin has supported the Lukashenko regime with $630 million in loans earlier this year and deployed fighter jets and anti-aircraft missiles to bolster the small state’s western border.

Although Lukashenko has emerged as the visible face of the escalating conflict, the outgoing head of the UK’s armed forces, Gen Sir Nick Carter, said on Sunday that the UK’s most imminent threat remains war with Russia. Carter told BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show that Moscow was reading from a “hybrid playbook where you link disinformation to destabilisation.”

He continued to say that the Belarus and Ukraine border situations are evidence of a “classic distraction” by the Russian government of the type that had been going on “for years and years and years”.

Poland has similarly accused the Kremlin of orchestrating the crisis from behind the scenes. Earlier this week, Mateusz Morawiecki, Poland’s Prime Minister, appealed to NATO to step in. He also repeated his demands of the EU to finance a wall to stop the influx.

Josep Borrell, the EU foreign policy chief, meanwhile spoke directly to his Belarusian counterpart, Vladimir Makei, about what he described as “the precarious humanitarian situation”. He tweeted: "The current situation is unacceptable and must stop. People should not be used as weapons."

Some commentators have pointed the blame at the EU, however, citing hypocrisy for its mismanagement of Belarus. Under the current sanctions regime, the Belarussian public could be seen as having been weaponised to serve a geopolitical proxy war between two powers. They have since born the greatest consequences instead of Lukashenko, with a democratic future between Belarus and the EU effectively sundered.

In fact, support for the EU among the general population has grown rapidly in recent years, with 77% of respondents reporting a positive or neutral stance towards the EU in a 2018 poll and a third favouring integration with Brussels in November 2020.  

However, this goodwill does not extend both ways. The EU as a whole has never expressed much enthusiasm for incorporating Belarus into the bloc. They condemn the Belarussian government for its "lack of commitment to democracy" yet provide little economic support for its democratic transition. Russia remains historically Belarus’s largest trading partner, representing nearly half of the country’s international trade. EU-Belarus trade makes up just 18% of the total. Reckless EU, UK and US sanctions have only served to further serve this growing co-dependency and harm public support for the West.

The failure to protect post-Soviet democracies is not new, with little resistance from NATO upon Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and the recent approval of the Nord Stream 2 which will severely undermine Ukraine’s protection against Russian expansionist interests. In all cases, the public have born the costs of the EU’s profit-minded pursuits, as sanctions have disproportionately put pressure on the democratic youth rather than the Lukashenko regime.

Truss has promised that the UK would not look away as Belarus used “desperate migrants as pawns” in “a carefully crafted crisis”. However, until London, alongside Brussels and Washington, is held accountable for its own humanitarian violations, it may be proven hypocritical to point fingers at Belarus for taking orders from Moscow.

With the future of Belarus tethered to the growing influence of Russia, sanctions are hopeless and counterproductive. The claims by EU on their success at improving bilateral relations do not correspond with reality. Instead, their intent is seemingly to wield as much economic damage on the public as possible, with little regard for the livelihoods and democratic futures for the millions of Belarussians.

The EU claims that the migrants are the hostages of Lukashenko’s regime, but the future of the entire state has likewise been held hostage by the failure of the West to protect democratic citizens from the encroaching Russian empire.

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