Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for appearing here today. And congratulations on receiving the John Humphrey Award.
We know there are some difficulties today, and seemingly there is a slippage in democracy in Ukraine. We had the discussion with a couple of the other countries just before you came here. Can you give some insight as to what is behind this? Obviously, it's for power-brokering purposes. How does that manifest itself? Is there any movement towards changing that, or is there any interest in changing that? If you're jailing as many people as has been commented on here—800 arrested and a former presidential candidate also arrested—and you yourself are having difficulties...is there a light at the end of the tunnel? Is there any progression and movement towards democracy?
The final question would be this. What can we do? Probably as a member of the OSCE, because it's a common body for Belarus as well as 56 countries—Canada, the United States, and 54 European countries—is there not something we can do to bring this discussion forward and try to collectively come up with some ideas?
The other final thing here would be on the sanctions that have been placed by the United States and others against Belarus. It's my feeling that sanctions don't necessarily work, that it's probably better to engage. Is that a way of looking at it with Belarus? Certainly I would think that would be the thought with Ukraine or with other countries. What about Belarus? Have the sanctions been working? And do they make any difference?