Andrei Sannikov: “European world” should be promoted in Belarus

Deployment of the Russian military base in Belarus has become a wake-up call for European politicians.

The leader of European Belarus civil campaign, the presidential candidate in the elections 2010 Andrei Sannikov has said so during the working session “Belarus: Elections in times of human rights crisis” at the OSCE’s Human Dimension Implementation Meeting (HDIM) in Warsaw on September 25, as he answered questions of the participants, charter97.org reporter informs.

- What could you say about the decision to deploy the Russian military air base in Belarus in the run-up to the presidential “elections”?

- The fact that Putin announced his plans to deploy an airbase in Belarus in the run-up to the so-called “elections” is not a coincidence. As he hears what the European Union is saying. And the European Union is saying: we are ready to lift sanctions from Alyaksandr Lukashenka and his people depending on how the matters with “elections” are to go.

There are already two military installations in Belarus, but they are not full-fledged military bases. And now there is going to be a fully functional air base, which is to menace the independence of Belarus, the security of Ukraine and Europe. It has been done in the run-up to the “elections”, and in this case Brussels is to decide, how to form its policy towards Lukashenka.

The current sanctions are not meaningful. It is just a ban on entry of some officials. On the other hand, when real sanctions were imposed – I and Zmitser Bandarenka were immediately released. Then, after Brussels stopped the process of imposing economic sanctions against Lukashenka’s “money-bags”, political prisoners remained in prisons, and it became a subject for new bargaining with Europe.

- What European diplomacy, European politicians could do in such a situation?

- What could be done now? These “elections” should be declared a fake, and any bargaining in its connection should be stopped. My advice is: do not maintain contacts with the dictator, but support the Belarusian nation, in different ways. At present the most important thing is information. There are independent media that need support.

In our country, Belarus, the “Russian world” is everywhere: on TV, on the Internet – everywhere. But there is no “European world’. Promotion of European values in Belarus is important. Help to promote the “European world”. We support European principles and the values of democracy, and we, not Lukashenka, should be partners of the European Union.