Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and Nancy Pelosi, a US House of Representatives member and the first female Speaker in American history, co-authored an op-ed for The Washington Post. In the piece published ahead of the NATO Summit, the politicians focus on the tyranny in Eastern Europe and call for increased pressure on dictators.
Here are the key points from the article:
📌 “Unfortunately, tyranny is on the march in Eastern Europe. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war of conquest in democratic Ukraine is emblematic of this sad trend. The mass terror and repression in neighboring Belarus, wrought by “Europe’s last dictator”, Aliaksandr Lukashenka, is less frequently reported on”.
📌 “As the NATO summit begins, our allies and partners should take steps to support the pro-democracy movement on the ground in Belarus while increasing pressure on Putin’s crony Lukashenka — and, by extension, Putin himself.
👉🏻 First, we must ensure a haven for Belarusian pro-democracy activists who need to seek asylum. We must provide comprehensive assistance to the Belarusian independent media, civil society groups, human rights defenders, and the repressed.
👉🏻 Second, we must enforce strong sanctions on Russia for its antidemocratic activities, isolating Putin and his economy from the democratic world.
👉🏻 Third, both Putin’s and Lukashenko’s regimes need to be designated “state sponsors of terrorism”.
📌 “History warns us that we must never be afraid to confront repressive dictatorships bent on snuffing out democracy. The Belarusian opposition and Ukrainian freedom fighters share a kinship. As they labor for their own liberation, they are beacons of freedom for Europe – and for the world. We must be there for them until democracy prevails”.
