1. What happened?
An information bomb exploded on a Ryanair plane flying from Athens to Vilnius last Sunday. While in the airspace of Belarus, the crew received information from the Minsk dispatcher about a terrorist threat on board.
“After the commander of a civilian ship made a decision to land at an alternate airfield and turned the plane in the direction of Minsk, a decision was made and the MiG-29 crew on duty from the Baranovichi airfield was taken into the air ,” explained Andrey Gurtsevich . “The crew on duty was given the task of exercising control and, if necessary, helping a civilian vessel to make a safe landing.”
One of the passengers clearly did not like the change in course . According to eyewitnesses, he appealed to the flight attendants, said that he should not sit in Minsk, he is a refugee and in Belarus he faces the death penalty.
“After a sudden maneuver of the plane, one guy panicked and grabbed his head. All four of us were taken out, the dogs sniffed all our things. This guy was taken aside and his belongings were thrown onto the runway. We asked him what was going on. He said who he was and added: "I'm being executed here." He was already calmer, but shivering. An officer was standing next to him all the time, and soon the military simply took him out, ”said one of the passengers.
According to the Belarusian media, the message about the mining of the plane came to the email address of the Minsk airport. Although it seems strange that information about an Irish plane flying from Athens to Vilnius arrives in the capital of Belarus.
Officially Minsk assures that the crew made the decision to land on their own. In support of this, the local TV publishes a radio exchange, in which the dispatcher asks whose recommendation to land in Minsk - airlines, airports of departure or arrival? To which the pilots respond: "This is our recommendation." However, in the story of the Canadian channel CBC News in the same episode, the roles are distributed exactly the opposite - “this is our recommendation,” says the dispatcher.
2. Special operation or an act of state terrorism?
Everything that happened, of course, looks like a special operation, as a result of which the Belarusian special services detained one of the most wanted people. And they took advantage of the experience of their neighbors. Do you remember how 33 Russian citizens were detained in Minsk last summer, some of whom fought in the Donbass? They were going to fly to Istanbul, and the Ukrainian special services were planning to land the plane on their territory. To do this, there had to be a decoy on board, who would simulate either sudden health problems or a terrorist threat. This scenario seems to have been successfully implemented by the Belarusians, although they will never officially admit it.
However, those who are now shouting loudest about "state terrorism" will find it useful to recall the precedents.
In 2012, Turkish fighters forced a Syrian passenger plane flying from Moscow to Damascus to land on their territory. Ankara suspected that the liner was carrying weapons. After the search, the special services seized some "dual-use" equipment, after which the liner continued on its way.
In 2013, Bolivian President Evo Morales , who was flying home from Moscow, was forced to land in Austria - France, Portugal and Spain closed their airspace to him. Western intelligence agencies assumed that Edward Snowden was aboard Morales .
In 2016, under the threat of the use of military aircraft in Kiev, a Belavia aircraft was landed. The Ukrainians removed from the flight the Russian political scientist Armen Martirosyan , who was considered the ideological inspirer of Anti-Maidan. However, after interrogation, he was released.
It will not be superfluous to recall how the United States actually kidnapped and sentenced businessman Viktor Bout and pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko to gigantic terms . You can treat Lukashenko in different ways, but he did nothing new, which the representatives of the “civilized community” would not have done before him.
3. Who is Roman Protasevich?
Before leaving Belarus, the young oppositionist took part in protests for many years, was a member of the nationalist "Young Front", and worked as a journalist for various media outlets. In 2019 he left for Poland and asked for political asylum.
In Warsaw, Protasevich became the editor-in-chief of the Nexta network of telegram channels, created by Stepan Putilo . It was these resources that became the main coordinating tool of anti-government protests last year.
Some Telegram channels reported that in the summer of 2014, Roman Protasevich left for Ukraine to participate in hostilities in Donbass on the side of the ATO forces, allegedly joining the Azov battalion and even rising to the rank of deputy commander of the 2nd shock and assault company. However, there is no confirmation of this information in open sources. In an interview with Yuri Dudyu Protasevich, he said that he went to the Maidan, and later spent a year in the ATO zone as a freelance journalist.
By the way, on the charges brought before the blogger, despite his fears, the death penalty is not threatened. He is suspected of inciting social enmity on the basis of professional affiliation (up to 12 years old), organizing mass riots (up to 15 years old), organizing group actions that grossly violate public order - the maximum sanction is up to 3 years .
4. Who is the blogger's companion?
Together with Protasevich, his girlfriend Sofia Sapega was removed from the flight . It is known that she is a citizen of Russia, she studied in Vilnius at the European Humanities University under the program "International Law and the Law of the European Union".
“Returning from vacation with a young man, Sofia was waiting for the upcoming Ph.D. thesis defense in Vilnius. Teachers and classmates claim that Sofia is distinguished by high academic performance and an undeniable reputation in the YSU community, ”the website of the educational institution says.
She met Roman Protasevich about six months ago. According to friends, she was not fond of politics.
Information appeared on the Internet that four Russian citizens got off the flight in Minsk. However, the airline did not confirm this information. Such stuffing looks more like an attempt to drag Russia into this scandal, accusing it of complicity with "state terrorism".
5. How does this threaten Belarus?
The West's reaction is predictable: everyone condemned Lukashenko. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said the incident "endangered the lives of more than 120 passengers," stressing that there were also US citizens among them. The European Parliament called the incident "state terrorism." A dozen and a half countries called on to release Protasevich and impose new sanctions on Belarus.
Most often, there are proposals to close the country's airspace for the passage of civilian ships. The Latvian airline on Monday has already made two flights bypassing Belarus. Such a measure is unlikely to hit Minsk hard. After the tragedy with the Malaysian Boeing in Donbass, most of the world's airlines are trying to fly over Ukraine, which makes it look like a blind spot on online flight tracking services. But Kiev is not particularly worried about this.
There are also more radical initiatives - to exclude Belarus from the International Civil Aviation Organization. That will automatically deprive the country of the opportunity to fly over the member countries of the Organization. There are also calls to simply prohibit Belavia's planes from landing at the airports of the European Union. Considering that Minsk is neither an important transport hub for Europe, nor a tourist Mecca, nor a major supplier of tourists, Belarus may well arrange an air blockade.
Quite a high price for one oppositionist, no matter what secrets he is now giving out. All of them can only be designed for an internal audience. The West, on the other hand, will sweep away any compromising evidence as evidence knocked out under torture. That threatens with other economic sanctions.
[NYTIMES] The strongman president of Belarus sent a fighter jet to intercept a European airliner traveling through the country’s airspace on Sunday and ordered the plane to land in the capital, Minsk, where a prominent opposition journalist aboard was then seized, provoking international outrage.
The stunning gambit by Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, a brutal and erratic leader who has clung to power despite huge protests against his government last year, was condemned by European officials, who compared it to hijacking. It underscored that with the support of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Mr. Lukashenko is prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to repress dissent.
The Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius, Lithuania, carrying some 170 passengers — among them the journalist, Roman Protasevich, 26 — was flying over Belarus when Belarusian air traffic controllers notified its pilots of "a potential security threat on board" and directed the plane to divert to Minsk, the Ireland-based airline said in a statement.
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