I agree that many people that didn't have a say in this will be affected. Do you have any suggestions on better measures that the EU could have taken? Or should the EU have taken no measures at all?
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.
Banning Belarusian airlines will only affect regular people. Those in the government don't rely on public airlines anyway.
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)
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.