EU and U.S. Suspend Sanctions on Belarus

The EU and the United States are to temporarily suspend major sanctions against one of Russia's closest allies, Belarus, and will also drop personal sanctions against its leader Alexander Lukashenko, whom the Bush administration once described as "Europe's last dictator."

The decision comes in response to Minsk's decision in August to free six political prisoners, who had been detained because of their anti-government activism.

Belarusian state businesses and Lukashenko himself have been under Western sanctions since 2006, when he swept to victory in a presidential election that independent observers deemed unfair, while there were also reports of a brutal crackdown against opposition groups by the Lukashenko administration.

The Council of the European Union issued a statement saying that, beginning on Saturday, it would suspend "for four months the asset freeze and travel ban applying to 170 individuals and the asset freeze applying to three entities in Belarus." Lukashenko is one of the individuals on the list, as are other high-profile officials from his administration and former government ministers.

Meanwhile the U.S. Treasury has said that from Saturday, it will allow most transactions with nine state entities for six months, although an arms embargo is being upheld.

State Department spokesman John Kirby urged Belarus "to improve its record with respect to human rights and democracy," while the EU expressed its belief that the decision to temporarily suspend sanctions should be viewed in "the context of improving EU-Belarus relations."

Although Belarus is part of Russia's international economic union and security alliance, over the last year there have been some signs that the country is becoming increasingly independent from Moscow.

In December 2014, Lukashenko ordered his cabinet ministers to stop trading using the Russian rouble, as the currency became increasingly unstable. Relations between the two countries had already deteriorated at this time after Belarus refused to back Russia's sanctions on the EU, and Russia responded by refusing to import dairy and food products from Belarus.

Most recently, Lukashenko seemed to rebuff Russia's plans to build an airbase in his country. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev told cabinet ministers in September that Russia was going to approach Minsk with the proposal to build the base. However, speaking earlier this month, Lukashenko denied having any knowledge of the plans saying, "I hear shrieks from the opposition about the deployment of a Russian airbase. I don't know anything about it."

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