Jew World Order

“This was a flight between two NATO members and between two EU members,” Westminster’s foreign affairs committee chairman Tom Tugendhat has told BBC Radio.

“If it’s not an act of war, it’s certainly a warlike act.”

“I think it was very frightening for the crew, for the passengers who were held under armed guard, had their bags searched, when it was clear it appears that the intent … was to remove a journalist and his travelling companion,” Ryanair’s chief executive Michael O’Leary told Irish Newstalk radio.

“We believe there was also some KGB agents offloaded off the aircraft as well.”

He said his airline would take guidance from European authorities on flying in Belarusian airspace, but that Ryanair had few flights crossing Belarus, and it would be a “very minor adjustment” to fly over Poland instead.

A Russian foreign ministry spokesperson has accused the West of hypocrisy in its outraged response to the diversion of an airliner to the Belarusian capital Minsk.

“It is shocking that the West calls the incident in Belarusian airspace ‘shocking’,” Maria Zakharova wrote on Facebook.

“Either [they] should be shocked by … the forced [landing] in Austria of the Bolivian president’s plane at the request of the United States … Or [they] should not be shocked by similar behaviour by others.”

The spokesperson refers to the grounding of then Bolivian president Evo Morales’ jet in 2013 amid flawed suspicions that US-sought whistleblower Edward Snowden was onboard.

At the time, Bolivian vice president Alvaro Garcia described Mr Morales as having been “kidnapped by imperialism” in the incident, which also implicated Spain, France, Portugal and Italy.

Bolivia’s then defence minister Ruben Saavedra, who was onboard, alleged the grounding of the plane was “a hostile act by the United States state department which has used various European governments”.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki – who was a state department spokesperson at the time – conceded the following day that the US had “been in contact with a range of countries that had a chance of having Snowden land or travel through their country”.

Our Moscow Correspondent Oliver Carroll points out that it would not be the first time Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko’s regime has intervened in a civilian flight in recent years.

According to his report on the grounding of a Belavia Airlines flight to Munich in January 2020, law enforcement officers boarded the plane after it was rediverted to Grodno in western Belarus and picked a total of eight people off the plane – three men and their families.

On the same day, rumours started to emerge about the disappearance of the top managers of Belarus’s four sugar factories.

It took nearly two weeks for Mr Lukashenko to comment on what he described as an “unprecedented” anti-corruption operation, accusing the unnamed arrested men of setting up a trading “scam”.

The UK’s foreign secretary Dominic Raab has called for Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko to be “held to account for his outlandish actions”.

“The UK condemns yesterday’s actions by the Belarusian authorities, who arrested journalist Roman Protasevich on the basis of a ruse, having forced his flight to land in Minsk,” Mr Raab said.

He added that London is calling for the “immediate release of Mr Protasevich and other political prisoners held in Belarus” and that the UK was working with its allies “on a co-ordinated response, including further sanctions”.

Mr Raab also called for the International Civil Aviation Organisation council to meet urgently “to consider the regime’s flouting of the international rules safeguarding civil aviation”.

Ahead of a meeting of the European Council, at which possible sanctions against Belarus will be discussed, Ireland’s foreign affairs minister Simon Coveney said any measures must have a “real edge”, as he called for an independent and international inquiry into the incident.

On the idea of closing Belarusian airspace, Mr Coveney said: “I certainly think that that would be a very strong response and in principle I have no issue with that.”

“I think the sanctions need to be fully thought through in terms of consequences, but I think this is an incident that is on the upper end of the scale in terms of something that needs a very strong sanction-based response,” he added.

“We cannot allow this incident to pass on the basis of warnings or strong press releases.

“I think there has to be a real edge to the sanctions that are applied on the back of this, so that we’re sending a very strong signal that EU airlines cannot be targeted by state-sponsored aviation piracy, which is essentially what’s happened here.”

He also lent further credence to claims that several security members may have been on the plane when it was forced to land in Minsk, saying: “Five or six people effectively left the plane. Only one of them was arrested, which would suggest that the others were secret service people.”

Belarusian opposition leader Pavel Latushka claims his shadow government group, National Anti-Crisis Management, has information showing that two Belarusians and four Russian nationals did not resume the flight to Vilnius.

While detained journalist Roman Protasevich is a Belarus citizen, and his travelling companion Sofia Sapega – who is also detained – is Russian (according to a statement from her university in Vilnius), as our Moscow correspondent Oliver Carroll notes, the identity of the remaining individuals is far from clear-cut.

The Belarusian state aviation agency has said that its air traffic controllers had issued “recommendations” to the crew of the Ryanair plane, but had not forced it to land using threats, according to Russia’s official RIA news agency.

Ryanair’s chief executive Michael O’Leary has accused Belarus of engaging in “state-sponsored piracy”

“This was a case of state-sponsored hijacking … state-sponsored piracy,” Mr O’Leary told Irish Newstalk radio.

“It appears the intent of the authorities was to remove a journalist and his travelling companion … we believe there were some KGB agents offloaded at the airport as well,” he said.

The Belarusian transport ministry has set up a commission to investigate the diversion and landing of a Ryanair plane in the capital Minsk and will publish the results of its investigation soon, according to Russia’s official RIA news agency.