International reactions
The tightening of the EU seals a long series of responses to the hijacking by governments and international institutions. Italy and Germany have also summoned their respective Belarusian ambassadors to ask for an account of the episode. During the day, Lithuania, the country of departure of the plane, announced a ban on flying in the skies of Belarus, recalling all citizens living in the country to their homeland. A move similar to that of the United Kingdom and France, while Poland asked for flights between the European Union and Belarus to be suspended outright. The US speaks of a “shocking act” and is calling for an international investigation
Belarus: it was the commander’s choice
Belarus has denied the allegations, blaming the deviation to a choice of the commander. According to the head of the Belarusian Air Force, it was the captain who decided to land the Ryanair scheduled flight in Minsk, “without external pressure”, after being warned of a bomb alert. “The decision was made by the crew commander without outside interference,” said Igor Goloub, commander of the air force. The decision, said the director of the aviation department of the Ministry of Transport, Artem Sikorsky, is attributable to a threatening e-mail from the Palestinian organization Hamas. “We, the Hamas soldiers, are calling for Israel to stop firing in Gaza and for the EU to renounce its support for Israel. Participants in the Delphi Economic Forum return home on Flight 4978. A bomb has been placed on this plane. If you don’t comply with our requests, it will explode over Vilnius, ”the e-mail read.
Russia, linked to Belarus, has also come under criticism and has rejected any charges against it. “It is shocking that the West considers the accident in Belarusian airspace” shocking “,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on her Facebook page, noting that Western countries have in the past been guilty of “kidnappings, forced landings and illegal arrests ». The Kremlin then specified not to rush to “support anyone”.
Belarus, Lukashenko restricts media activity
Meanwhile, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko has signed a law that drastically limits media activities and allows them to be closed without a court hearing. Under the new law, the news media are prohibited from reporting live on unauthorized mass gatherings. It also allows the Ministry of Information to order the closure of a media; previously media closures required a court decision. Other restrictions include banning the publication of unauthorized opinion poll results.
The episode (and Ryanair’s version)
The episode dates back to Sunday 23 May. Ryanair flight FR4978, headed from Athens to Vilnius in Lithuania, was hijacked by a Belarusian air force jet to Minsk, the capital of the former Soviet republic. According to a spokesman for Ryanair, the pilot of the company’s Boeing 737 was notified of a “potential threat to safety on board”. Once they landed in Minsk, local authorities boarded and arrested Roman Protasevich, reporter who covered the 2020 election denouncing the irregularities and fraud that would have led to the re-election of the autocrat Alexander Lukashenko. Only in the evening did the plane take off again towards its original destination. The company’s CEO, Michael O’Leary, denounced the “state kidnapping” suffered by his airline’s plane.
–
