The United States has announced visa restrictions on several Belarusians, citing the repression of athletes abroad including the attempted forced repatriation of a sprinter at the Tokyo Olympic Games.
Krystsina Tsimanouskaya refused to board a flight back home in 2021 when she was removed from the Games against her will after publicly complaining about national team coaches.
She defected to Poland, saying she feared for her safety if she returned to Belarus. The country’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, has said she was “manipulated”.
“We stand in solidarity with Ms Tsimanouskaya and all others who have experienced the regime’s attempts to silence criticism,” said the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken.
The move relates to “involvement in serious, extraterritorial counter-dissident activity” but the US state department did not detail who was being targeted with the new visa limits.
Tensions are high between Russia and the US over a possible invasion of Ukraine, as Nato said there had been a significant movement of Russian military forces into neighbouring Belarus in recent days.
Last May a Ryanair plane was forced to land in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, when controllers cited a bomb threat. Once it was on the ground, a Belarusian dissident journalist on board the plane was arrested along with his female companion.
Belarus accused the west of using the episode to try to undermine Lukashenko.
Blinken on Thursday called on Minsk “to immediately release all political prisoners (and) to engage in sincere facilitated dialogue with the democratic opposition and civil society”.
The call comes as the US warned Chinese firms they would face consequences if they sought to evade any export controls imposed on Moscow in the event of Russia invading Ukraine.
State department spokesperson Ned Price made the remark on Thursday after China’s foreign ministry said China and Russia had coordinated their positions on Ukraine during a meeting between their foreign ministers in Beijing on Thursday.
“We have an array of tools that we can deploy if we see foreign companies, including those in China, doing their best to backfill US export control actions, to evade them, to get around them,” Price told a regular news briefing.
Western countries say any invasion of Ukraine by Russia would bring sanctions on Moscow and Washington has said it is prepared to impose financial sanctions as well as export-control measures.