The U.S., the U.K. and Canada all passed new restrictions on Belarus.
President Joe Biden unveiled the strongest sanctions to date on Belarus to mark the first anniversary of the controversial re-election of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, which U.S. officials said was fraudulent. Lukashenko, who has been dubbed by the media as “Europe’s Last Dictator” and who is a noted ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has kept a tight grip on the country’s presidency since the office was created in 1994 after the fall of the Soviet Union. His most recent election in 2020, widely thought by the opposition and countries in the West to have been rigged in Lukashenko’s favor, spurred the largest protests against the government in the country’s history.
