KYIV: Ukraine on Wednesday sanctioned Belarus’s long-time leader Alexander Lukashenko for providing material assistance to Russia in its invasion and enabling the “killing of Ukrainians.”
Lukashenko is one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest allies and allowed his country to be used as a springboard for Moscow’s February 2022 attack.
Russia has also deployed various military equipment to the country, Ukraine alleges, including relay stations that connect to Russian attack drones, fired in their hundreds every night at Ukrainian cities.
“Today Ukraine applied a package of sanctions against Alexander Lukashenko, and we will significantly intensify countermeasures against all forms of his assistance in the killing of Ukrainians,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a statement.
Russia has also said it is stationing Oreshnik missiles in Belarus, a feared hypersonic ballistic weapon that Putin has claimed is impervious to air defenses. It has twice been fired on Ukraine during the war — launched from bases in Russia — though caused minimal damage as experts said it was likely fitted with dummy warheads both times.
Zelensky also accused Lukashenko of helping Moscow avoid Western sanctions.
The measures are likely to have little practical effect, but sanctioning a head of state is a highly symbolic move.
Ukraine and several Western states sanctioned Putin at the very start of the war.
Lukashenko has at times tried to present himself as a possible intermediary between Kyiv and Moscow.
Initial talks on ending Russia’s invasion in the first days of the war were held in the country.
But Kyiv and its Western backers have largely dismissed his attempts to mediate, seeing him as little more than a mouthpiece for the Kremlin.