Not the time for what-about. Why is it worth noting?
The West is trying to present itself as a viable alternative to Russia to Belarussian people. The opposition politicians he is attacking largely support leaning westwards. How do they criticize this without appearing hypocritical? It's very hard.
If the West tries to punish Belarus with sanctions that hurt the ordinary Belarussian it will likely look even worse.
I can't actually think of a scenario here where Lukashenko doesn't win something.
You don't really need to murder or imprison them when you can just make it so no one trusts them or they can't find an audience.
That said I do think Belarus fucked up here evaluating by their own best interests. Having an open dictatorship in Europe has always made a lot of people uncomfortable but was tolerated as long as they didn't draw too much attention to it or do any scary shit to outsiders.
Here they kinda did both. Would not surprise me if this ends up being a huge problem for them long-term.
It exposes the hypocrisy in the statements coming from our governments right now.