
GENEVA (TASS): Bern has imposed sanctions on 17 Belarusian citizens and 11 legal entities, including the state-owned Belavia airline and two non-Be-larusian organizations. This was announced on Monday by the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) of Switzerland.
The sanctions should take effect Monday at 18:00 local time (20:00 Moscow time). The press secretary of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry Anatoly Glaz, the head of the ONT TV channel Marat Markov, the chairman of the State Border Committee of Belarus Anatoly Lappo and a number of employees of the border services and the judicial system of the republic fell under the restrictions. These citizens will be banned from entering Switzerland, and their bank accounts in this country (if any) will be blocked.
In addition to Belavia, Grodno Azot, Belorusneft, Belshina and a number of other enterprises, including the Syrian air carrier Cham Wings Airlines and the Tu-rkish company VIP Grub, which, according to SECO, are engaged in organization of trips to Belarus.
According to the Swiss authorities, the last two organizations by their actions allegedly facilitated the illegal crossing of the external borders of the E-uropean Union by mig-rants. Legally, persons who have come under the sanctions will be banned from i-mporting a number of goo-ds from Switzerland, as w-ell as importing oil, petroleum products and potassium chloride into the country.
The crisis on the borders of Belarus with Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, where migrants have rushed since the beginning of the year, sharply escalated on November 8. Several thousand people approached the Polish border from the Belarusian side, some of them tried to get into Poland by force, breaking through the barbed wire fence. In recent weeks, migrants have tried to enter Polish territory in small groups several times a day.
Poland blames the current migration crisis on the Belarusian authorities. According to Warsaw, they deliberately bring thousands of migrants to their country in order to then send them to the border, destabilizing the situation. President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko declares that it is the Western countries that are to blame for this situation, because of whose actions people are fleeing the war.
The post Switzerland imposes sanctions against Belarusian citizens and legal entities appeared first on The Frontier Post.