Page 52 - BNE_magazine_05_2020

52 I Eastern Europe bne May 2020
Russia is in a relatively good fiscal position to withstand the combination of a low oil price and the initial onslaught of COVID-19, but Putin knows investment flow is critical for the economy's long-term development. The current sanctions have been an enormous drag on inward investment as investors are reluctant to engage due to the perceived reputational
and business risk.
The definition of the law surrounding sanctions has not altered but COVID-19 has changed the optics as mutual economic co-operation becomes more important than politics.
Andrei Bystritsky, chairman of the Valdai International Discussion Club Foundation Council, believes sanctions will be on the table by September when he expects the world’s biggest
countries will meet to come up with a development plan to overcome
a global depression.
“That sancions will be severely reduced – or changed – is quite high,” Bystritsky told the news agency Prime .” It will
be necessary to restore the world by developing some common plan of action and sanctions are a completely unnecessary obstacle.”
remark was also very stupid – as Europe wanted to squash Lukashenko with sanctions at the time. The diplomatic incident which followed did not
play well for Europe’s last dictator. Westerwelle quietly reaffirmed his “determination not to move one inch from my initial commitment to human and civil rights in Belarus”. Then, he served Lukashenko with one of the most punishing smack-downs I can recall. One off-colour homophobic remark ended
up costing the government of Belarus billions of dollars – while the football team the world is currently betting on also found itself in sticky circumstances.
By July 2012, Westerwelle had helped create brutal sanctions against Belarus, targeting more than 200 politically affiliated people for their roles in the country’s awful record on human rights under Lukashenko, and the president’s brutal crackdown on any form of political opposition.
Left without a bus
One of the individuals hit was Yury Chyzh – owner of Dinamo Minsk – who literally found himself unable to hire a bus to transport juniors to a soccer tournament. The coach hire company’s bank in Lithuania returned Chyzh’s payment, after the football team and 17 other entities owned by Chyzh were sanctioned.
Sanctions against Chyzh were ultimately lifted on July 13, 2015, as despite the ownership of a very large swathe of Belarus’ highly corrupt economy, it could not be proven that President Lukashenko actually benefited financially from Chyzh. I thus underscore my remarks – for the avoidance of all doubt – with the
Many soccer fans around the world may have been pleased to find they had a match to bet on, but at what cost to public health? Some fans wore face masks to the game.
Lukashenko’s death match
Christina Petru
COVID-19 has rightly grounded almost all sports fixtures – with one big exception being football matches in Belarus’ Premier League. The usually minor matter, on the international scale, of a derby between FC Minsk and Dinamo Minsk on March 28 earned global attention, thanks to the desperation of gambling companies and their equally desperate customers. It’s time to desist – lest we kill enough people to make up an entire league of sportsmen and women – while stroking the ego of a moustachioed psychopath.
Belarus’ President Alexander G. Lukashenko is often described by
www.bne.eu
international media outlets as “Europe’s last dictator”. In power since the exact date of the presidency’s creation, July 20, 1994, Lukashenko has expressed his chagrin toward this label on a number of occasions, often causing bilateral controversy in the process.
Guido Westerwelle – Germany’s first gay foreign minister, who tragically passed away in 2016 – took the full brunt of
the strongman’s ire, when he called out Lukashenko’s dire human rights record in March 2012. “It is better to be
a dictator than gay!” Lukashenko snapped. Besides being prurient and incredibly pathetic, Lukashenko’s