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Josep Borrell: More Belarus sanctions to come Monday
The EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell confirmed details Sunday of new sanctions Brussels is set to approve against Belarus, targeting people and entities involved in the migrant crisis on the border with Poland.
In an interview with French newspaper Journal du Dimanche, Borrell said the sanctions should be agreed at Monday’s EU Council of Foreign Ministers.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is accused of bringing migrants from Iraq, Syria and other countries to the border with Poland to engineer a crisis that EU leaders have denounced as a “hybrid attack.”
Borrell explained that ministers were ready to sign-off on an expanded legal framework to widen penalties and include entities including airlines and travel agencies involved in ferrying migrants to Belarus, banning their leaders from traveling and freezing their assets in Europe.
Borrell also said the existing sanctions framework would be used to target around 30 Lukashenko administration officials involved in the crisis.
The heightened tensions sparked by the Belarus crisis and fears over a Russian troop build up near Ukraine’s eastern border, have underscored the need for greater EU integration in defence, Borrell said.
“Europe is in danger and Europeans do not realize it,” he told the paper. “Today’s world … is no longer governed by the desire for peace and benevolence. We still have power conflicts between carnivores where herbivores are unlikely to survive.”
Amid a flurry of diplomatic activity over the weekend, Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Piotr Wawrzyk also confirmed new EU sanctions were close. He welcomed the way European nations and the United States have come together against Lukashenko’s regime.
The U.K. also came out strongly against Lukashenko on Sunday and pledged to support European allies. “The United Kingdom will not look away,” Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, wrote in The Telegraph. “We will stand with our allies in the region, who are on the frontier of freedom.” Truss said Minsk’s main backer, Russia, “had clear responsibility” and must press Belarus authorities to end the crisis.
Britain has sent a detachment of 10 soldiers to help Polish security forces on the border. In a sign of the tension in eastern Europe, British newspaper The Mirror reported Sunday that the U.K. has 600 special forces troops ready to deploy to Ukraine due to concerns over a possible intensified Russian incursion. Meanwhile, Lukashenko was reported Saturday requesting Russia to deploy nuclear-capable missiles in the south and west of his country.
