Reports that Ukraine allegedly asked the EU to exclude Belarus from the latest sanctions packages are not true, Oleg Nikolenko, the official representative of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, said on his Facebook page. According to him, various sanctions, both personal and sectoral, have already been imposed on Belarus for supporting Russian aggression.
Nikolenko noted that now Kyiv, together with European partners, is working on the “maximum content” of the new, tenth package of EU sanctions.
On December 12, some Ukrainian media reported that Belarus was not included in the latest packages of European sanctions at the request of Kiev. The source of information was a tweet by Radio Liberty journalist Rikard Jozwiak. “One of the reasons why Belarus was not sanctioned along with Russia in the latest EU sanctions packages is that Ukraine asked that Minsk stay out,” the journalist wrote.
The European Union began to introduce restrictive measures against Belarus in 2020 in connection with the falsification of the presidential elections and the systematic violation of human rights in this country. Now there are personal sanctions against Alexander Lukashenko and his associates, as well as against ministries, companies, banks and certain sectors of the economy.