President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko ordered to strengthen efforts to identify “spies” at enterprises who transmit information to the West about decisions taken by the Belarusian government to minimize the impact of Western sanctions on the economy.
He stated this today at a meeting with Industry Minister Pyotr Parkhomchik and Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Nazarov, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Look at your employees in enterprises. I have information that a few scoundrels are still left here and there. Their goal is to inform the collective West about how we are trying to circumvent sanctions. They actually spy and pass this information on there. We identified several. They will sit there for a long time. But we must see them. Only a few, but there are still some left. And these are not just people who express their civic position. These are people who deliberately harm our economy with money from Western intelligence services,” Lukashenko said.
TV journalist Igor Tur draws attention to the fact that the practice of criminal punishment for industrial espionage is widespread throughout the world.
“It will be interesting whether in the West the terms for industrial espionage (which is punished incredibly cruelly in the West) will be called “Lukashenko’s repressive political machine”?.. The question is rhetorical, of course. But the deadlines for the spies will be more than justified. Zero politics, strictly economics,” Tur wrote in his Telegram channel.
Russian political scientist Andrei Suzdaltsev, who supports the Belarusian opposition, believes that measures to search for “spies” will not yield results.
“It is almost impossible to hide something in Belarus. The entire control system flows incredibly. And any “schemes” to circumvent sanctions almost instantly become and will become known to the initiators of sanctions. Moreover, it is worth recalling that corporations and firms that are ready to come “to the aid” of Belarusian “partners” doom themselves to be included in the sanctions list. So the value of information about the “schemes” is colossal, but we repeat that it is impossible to close all the “leaks”. There are too many people in the management structures who hate the ruling regime and are looking for an opportunity to harm it,” Suzdaltsev wrote.
For the last month, the leaders of the Belarusian opposition have been promising to organize a nationwide strike, to which the collectives of many enterprises are allegedly ready to join. Previous initiatives by fugitive oppositionists failed miserably.