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“If they impose additional sanctions, we must respond.” Lukashenko threatens to cut off gas supplies to Europe


Photo-LETA/AFP

Belarus’s authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko warned on Thursday that he would respond to new sanctions that could be imposed on Minsk in the context of the migrant crisis, threatening to suspend the transit of natural gas to Europe.


“If they impose additional sanctions, we must respond,” Lukashenko said in a statement issued by the president’s office.

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“We are warming Europe, and they are threatening us,” said the dictator, recalling that natural gas is entering Poland via the Yamal-Europe gas pipeline in Belarus.

“And if we suspend gas supplies?” asked Lukashenko.

In a conversation with the news agency AFP, the leader of the Belarusian opposition, Sviatlan Cihanouska, expressed confidence that Lukashenko would not carry out this threat.

“It would do more harm to him, to Belarus, than to the EU, and I assume he is bluffing,” Cihanouska said.

She also urged European countries to maintain a strong stance and not to communicate directly with the illegitimate leader.

EU sanctions on Belarus over the migrant crisis caused by the Lukashenko regime could be imposed this week, EU officials predict.

“We are in a situation where there are real consequences [Minskai] had already to be determined. That is what we want together with our European partners, “German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Thursday.

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As part of an extensive hybrid attack on the Lukashenko regime, efforts have been made in recent months to send thousands of illegal immigrants from Belarus to Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, most of whom have arrived in Belarus as tourists from Iraq.

The EU has accused the Minsk regime of seeking to avenge support for the Belarusian opposition and of sanctions against Belarus in response to last year’s violent crackdown on protests.

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