US diplomats inquire if Lithuania would agree to ease sanctions on Belarus

VILNIUS - American diplomats have asked Lithuania whether it would be willing to ease the existing sanctions on the Minsk regime after Belarus released a dozen political prisoners at the end of June, including the husband of Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Lithuania's public broadcaster LRT reported on Thursday.

According to the broadcaster, the US representatives asked whether Vilnius would be willing to free up trade in fertilizers.

Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys has neither confirmed nor denied the reports about such talks.

"We have ongoing consultations on various issues, topics and things and I certainly could not say that nothing has ever been discussed, I have discussed it myself," Lithuania's top diplomat told LRT.

However, he assured that the easing of the existing sanctions was not a subject of negotiations in the context of the release of Siarhei Tsikhanouski and other political prisoners.

"My only answer is that we must not give the regime a reason to trade in human beings because the number of prisoners will only increase," Budrys said.

Social Democratic MP Remigijus Motuzas, chair of the Seimas Committee on Foreign Affairs, doubts that Belarus would "ask so much" for the release of a dozen prisoners, and that even if the Americans wanted it, Lithuania would not agree.

As BNS reported earlier, the years-long transit of fertilizers made by Belarusian group Belaruskali through Lithuania was stopped by after the governmental commission that checks the transactions of strategic companies, and later also the government, decided that the Belarusian company's contract with Lithuanian Railways was not in line with Lithuania's country's security interests. In early March 2022, the EU imposed sanctions on Belaruskali.

In late June, the Lithuanian Seimas authorized the government to introduce national economic sanctions against Russia and Belarus in case the European Union failed to extend its own.

Under the amendments adopted, the government will be able to impose two types of sanctions, freezing of assets in Lithuania and sectoral restrictions.