Pretty much the same situation with Iran. Actions intended to punish an unjust government mostly just hurt their citizens.
Even Czech Belarussians tend to take the bus back home.
It is going to be worse for expats in France or Britain, though.
Beyond that, Poland may be bordering Belarus, but Poland is a huge country. Berlin to Minsk is 1,100 km, a 12-13 hour bus ride at minimum. Add a 2-3 hour wait at the border to be realistic. This all adds up to a much longer trip than a 1-2 hour flight. Especially for immigrants that are probably visiting home for a weekend trip and can’t afford to waste 3 days just on traveling.
Yeah, no one does a weekend hop to family and back under such conditions. Visits are monthly.
Warsaw to Minsk buses take about 12 hours too. But the ticket is cheap, about 20 eur. I don't think you can buy an air ticket under 100 eur. Perhaps even much more (150-200).
Given that a lot of the people work for peanuts, they choose the far cheaper option even if it means a much longer and uncomfortable journey.
Banning Belarusian airlines will only affect regular people. Those in the government don't rely on public airlines anyway.
He set up a kind of win/win situation. Sanctions have a habit of backfiring at the best of times, and he's set up a situation where the hypocrisy of the EU/US can be hammered home in domestic propaganda with persistent comparisons to Morales/Snowden incident. It'll be hard for pro western Belarussian politicians/journalists to effectively rebut these.
Meanwhile they can gently guide Belarussians into going on holiday in Russia where they might have gone to Europe if flights are banned. Isolating them this way would be a feature, not a bug.
If, on the other hand, the EU/US just sanction a few individuals they look weak and Lukashenko looks strong.
It's quite the pickle.
The actions by the EU only help Putin and Lukashenko.
What, specifically, does this mean? The EU sanctions, idk, the Bahamas? Who? And how?
To literally "seize" the money stored in an offshore bank account is difficult unless the EU is also willing to march an army into those countries.
Nobody ever touches offshore havens since rich people from everywhere have money there.
It took 9/11 for Switzerland to not laugh at law enforcement request from other countries. (Probably still laughs to anyone thats not US and maybe EU)
Exactly how does that help anyone?
Opinions like this only seem to come from Westerners who will never have to face the consequences of such actions. Geopolitics is complicated and as my original comment said, regular people are usually the ones getting hurt.
If a government does anything there are regular people that are going to get hurt, but that's not a reason to stop governing.
To some extent you can target the elite and decisionmakers. But after a very short while, there is no easy way to separate "people" from the elite. Targeting businesses, exports and so on which is the next step - is always going to make the average citizen worse. But the argument works both ways: ensuring the wellbeing of the people helps the legitimacy and strength of the regime. I don't think anyone thinks it's a good idea to stop short of anything that makes the life of average belorussians worse.