Flying over Belarus might be a good income for the country - no longer.
An interesting shift of the last decade or so of sanction wars is that sanctions must be targeted against the regime, not the people. Otherwise it's a bit of an own goal - you give the regime a bogeyman to point at.
As such, this seems like a good, pragmatic type of sanction. Few regular Belarusians will feel the impact, but it does strike at the regime, even if it seems like small change.
Why do you think this is the case? The regime isn't flying on a public airline. If you're a regular Belarusian trying to travel to/from the West, these actions are only making your life worse.
Travelling by land has gotten much more complicated over the last year. Before, to travel to Russia all i had to do is to get a ticket, there was no border between Russia and Belarus. Fell asleep on a train in Minsk, woke up in Moscow\Saint-Petersburg. Nice.
Now the only reason that i am able to travel to/through Russia to Belarus willy-nilly is because i have direct relatives that are now citizens\residents there. I have to have copies of their documents, like passport & document confirming that they are residents and are residing in Russia legally. During last year i had to forfeit a set of documents that would allow me to travel there[0]. Only reason why it worked was because border point was mostly analogue, and in general they were unable to verify that the doc was real. More of a loophole rather than straight hack but still.
Things are not great if you want to travel to\from EU by land. Since august-september 2020 "due to corona" you are allowed to travel "outside" once in 6 months over the land border [1]. There is no limitation on how people can _enter_ the country. Get a visa and you are good to go. Weird? yea. Dumb? hell yea. Think about that like it is an anemic attempt to stop people from leaving the country. Iirc before August there was no limits set by gov on how people can travel at all.
I'm not sure if Belarussians having to cancel their holidays to the West and going to Crimea instead is going to have the desired effect of driving sympathies among Belarussians toward the west.
Moreover the people who actually like Lukashenko will probably be pretty indifferent to this. They weren't planning on flying to Berlin any time soon. I'm almost certain Putin will jump on the chance to have alternate routes to Russian tourist destinations opened up (possibly even subsidized, like he did for flights to Crimea).
I'm starting to wonder if Lukashenko/Putin wasn't counting on this kind of knee jerk reaction. If sanctions were on the cards anyway, with this stunt they got to pick the timing, reason and type.
The desired effect is to increase pressure on Lukashenko and I'm sure every holidaymaker with a ruined trip knows very well whose stupid stunt is to blame for it.
Holidaymakers who were unlikely to be Lukashenko supporters in the first place and who now can't come home and tell people how great the West is.
I don't think he's losing out that badly here. Indeed, increased isolation from the West may have been a goal from the outset. Having the West do it for him is even better.
> Holidaymakers who were unlikely to be Lukashenko supporters in the first place and who now can't come home and tell people how great the West is.
Now even his supporters have to make every foreign flight through Moscow as a constant reminder of what great relations the potato czar has with rest of the world. Dictatorship are very sensitive to image issues (see Winnie the Pooh).
On the practical side, it starves Belarus of overflying fees. The stunt will cost them hundreds of millions, and hopfully further targeted sanctions will make whatever's left (and funneled into their private accounts by the regime) more difficult to spend.
>Dictatorship are very sensitive to image issues (see Winnie the Pooh).
Of course. That's why they goaded the West into sanctioning them for the most hypocritical reason they could.
"Western hypocrisy" is a key plank of Russian propaganda that works decently well at keeping them suspicious, afraid and angry at us. It's used similarly by Democrats on their base against Republicans and vice versa to great effect at keeping the base fired up.
Belarus is not Russia but I'm sure the same applies there.
>The stunt will cost them hundreds of millions
This is probably why RT stated that Putin was willing to step in to help out financially. I expect that was actually even agreed ahead of time.whol
Lukashenko on the whole would probably prefer that as much foreign aid and investment came from Russia as possible. It's his opponents who will want to demonstrate all the great stuff Western investment can do for the country.
And, of course, Putin would prefer it if we severed links given the strategic importance of the country. He doesn't want another Ukraine.
An interesting shift of the last decade or so of sanction wars is that sanctions must be targeted against the regime, not the people. Otherwise it's a bit of an own goal - you give the regime a bogeyman to point at.
As such, this seems like a good, pragmatic type of sanction. Few regular Belarusians will feel the impact, but it does strike at the regime, even if it seems like small change.