> This is not a good choice in dictatorships as the population has no choice who to vote for.

The population voted for the opposition candidate, took to the streets when the results were rigged, but had no leaders willing to escalate the confrontation when the state had its pants down. The dictator has buckled his pants and has gradually reduced the opposition to posting memes in Telegram chats. And even this activity is no longer safe.

>but the problem is that such sanctions hurt the population the most.

This sort of coexistence has been attempted and patently failed.

It's their population, not ours. An important distinction.

We (rest of the world, but particularly Europe) need to get stricter.

I know what I will write will sound like I don’t have any empathy but… hitting population hard, to the starvation even, will make them go after Lukashenko. This is why communism in Poland was defeated by the workers. They had no bread so they had to rise. Again, I would like to underline that this is not a solution that I support but history showed us this is how u make a revolution and real change