Opinion: We need more than empty threats to face down Lukashenko

To influence authoritarian regimes like Belarus, we must be more imaginative, led by that regime's specific weaknesses, says Honorary Professor Mark Galeotti (UCL School of Slavonic & East European Studies). It's easy to express outrage at the Belarusian government's act of air piracy, making a plane land at Minsk so that journalist and dissident Roman Protasevich could be arrested on the tarmac. It's rather harder to find responses that will be legal, proportionate and above all meaningful. Many sanctions are really intended to do little more than make us feel better. Expressions of outrage not backed by deeds make us look weak, not strong. Personal travel bans and asset freezes on officials unlikely to holiday or maintain property in the West will be little more than symbolic. We should avoid giving the impression that we are simply going through empty rituals of condemnation: this merely encourages more of the same.