By tradition, we publish the original analytical notes
The consequences of the sanctions imposed against Lukashenko's regime are more and more difficult to hide behind the administrative retention of the national currency rate and brave statements of officials that the sanctions motivate them and strengthen the Belarusian economy. The official data of Belstat show that industrial production for April 2022 has decreased by 10.6% compared to the same period last year. And in April, Prime Minister Golovchenko was not so rosy about the prospects of BMZ, MTZ and MAZ, which are looking for a place to sell the accumulated stock of $1.5 billion, the very same that used to be exported to the EU, the U.S. and Ukraine. Meanwhile, Grodno Azot has stopped exporting its products altogether and works only for the domestic market.
The regime consistently accuses the democratic forces of inflaming the situation and considers this the only reason for imposing sanctions. It does not admit publicly, but it understands perfectly well that the sanctions are obvious consequences for the murders of peaceful Belarusians, torture, arrests of leaders of independent trade unions, mass repression, hijacking of an airplane, artificially created migrant crisis on the border with the EU, and complicity in the aggression against Ukraine.
We are concentrating on working on sanctions that do not affect the savings of Belarusians, but rather even save the savings of generations in the form of gold and foreign exchange reserves, which today are spent in vain by the economists of the regime. Our goal is to significantly influence the financing of the regime and its repressive apparatus. First of all, we are talking about freezing the reserves of the National Bank of the Republic of Belarus, correspondent accounts of state-owned banks and funds of the International Monetary Fund. We also pay special attention to the possibilities of circumventing the sanctions, as long as they exist, the sanctions do not work to the full extent and do not have a proper impact on the situation. The regime is using the loopholes for its own enrichment, capitalizing on companies that left Russia but remained in Belarus, and continuing to escalate the war in Ukraine, as critical components for the military-industrial complex continue to flow to Belarus and from there to Russia.
Economic pressure on Lukashenko's regime should be timely, effective, and targeted. This will allow not to stretch the sanctions in time and minimize the side effects affecting the savings of Belarusians. Only in this case the sanctions are able to achieve their goal in a short time - to force the regime to stop repressions against the Belarusan people and complicity in the war against Ukraine, as well as to force it to fulfill the conditions for lifting the sanctions that are well known to the regime: release of all political prisoners, cessation of repressions, bringing to justice those guilty of brutal repressions, withdrawal of Russian troops, and holding new elections under the supervision of the OSCE.
Traditionally, we publish the original analytical notes we submit to the competent authorities of the European Union and the United States of America, with the exception of matters requiring confidentiality. We do it to show Belarusans the vector in which we work on economic pressure on Lukashenko's regime. And you can see the result of this work in the already adopted and planned packages of sanctions, as well as in the depressing data, which even Belstat can no longer hide, and in the way the rhetoric of regime officials is changing.