WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States on Tuesday banned the sale of airline tickets for commercial flights to and from Belarus, a move that comes after Minsk in May forced a commercial plane to land in order to proceed the arrest of a dissident journalist.
This is Washington’s latest move to respond to Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s increased crackdown on pro-democracy protests denouncing fraud in the August 2020 presidential election. Lukashenko rejects the accusations.
The United States and the European Union refuse to recognize the outcome of the poll and have imposed sanctions on senior Belarusian officials, among others.
In announcing the ban on commercial flights, the US Department of Transportation said the State Department had determined that restricting travel between the United States and Belarus was in the interest of Washington’s foreign policy following the forced landing of the plane of the company Ryanair last month.
The measure still authorizes transport operations “deemed to be in the American national interest”, in particular for humanitarian or national security reasons, it is stated in the administration’s decision.
Considered for several weeks, the directive has a mainly symbolic value, a relatively small number of plane tickets being sold to American travel services for commercial flights with Belarus.
(Report by David Shepardson and Jonathan Landay; French version Jean Terzian)
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