Europe outraged as Belarus forces Ryanair jet to land in Minsk

“This is a serious and dangerous incident, which requires international investigation,” NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg said on Twitter.

A spokeswoman for the Interior Ministry in Minsk declined to comment.

Belarus’s President Alexander Lukashenko. AP

Potential measures when EU leaders meet could include sanctions against individuals and entities, suspending all flights by EU airlines over Belarus, banning Minsk’s carrier Belavia from landing at airports in the bloc, and the suspension of all transit, including ground travel, between Belarus and the EU, according to an official familiar with the discussions. The steps would be on top of a sanctions package Brussels was already working on and was aiming to present next month.

A post-election crackdown by Lukashenko’s administration on the opposition already resulted in US and EU sanctions and pushed the president, in office since 1994, closer to Russia. Sunday’s events risk deepening the international isolation of a country that former US Secretary State of Condoleezza Rice referred to in 2006 during a visit to Lithuania as the last dictatorship in Europe.

The latest incident has the potential to influence already strained ties between President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin, even as the two leaders move toward a potential first summit as soon as next month.

Mr Lukashenko is slated to meet with Mr Putin this week in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Rossiya-1 television reported on Sunday (Monday AEST). Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov didn’t respond to a request for comment after hours in Moscow.

US State Department officials have been talking to Brussels, Vilnius and Athens all day long, according to a person familiar with the diplomacy who asked not to be named talking about internal discussions.

The Ryanair plane with registration number carrying opposition figure Raman Pratasevich which was traveling from Athens to Vilnius. AP

Mr Lukashenko gave an unconditional order to turn the plane around, the state news service Belta said, citing the unofficial Pool Pervogo telegram channel, which is widely seen as run by people close to the presidential press service.

An adviser to Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said Mr Pratasevich, 26, had been bundled off the flight in Minsk by police. “At first he panicked, then calmed down a bit, but still was trembling,” Franak Viacorka said on Twitter, citing passengers. “He said he’ll face the death penalty here. He was taken aside, his belongings dumped on the runway.”

Mr Pratasevich and his NEXTA colleague Stsiapan Putsila were accused of organising mass unrest and group actions severely violating public order, the Investigative Committee said on November 5. They were also accused of stirring “social hatred” against law enforcers via their Telegram channels.

Mr Nauseda called the Ryanair forced landing an unprecedented “kidnapping of a person by use of military force” and urged NATO and the EU to react to the threat posed by the Belarusian leadership to civil aviation.

Mateusz Morawiecki, the Prime Minister of Belarus’s neighbour Poland, urged sanctions against Mr Lukashenko for committing an “act of state terrorism”. Greece called it a “state hijacking”.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Mass denounced Belarus’s actions, saying that forcing a plane to land under the pretext of a bomb threat was a “severe interference into civil aviation travel”.

“Such an act cannot remain without consequences from the side of the European Union,” Mr Maas said.

There were conflicting reports of the number of people who were on board. The foreign ministries of Greece and Lithuania said there were 171 passengers from at least 18 countries. The Belarusian state news agency Belta reported that there were 123 passengers.

Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte arrived at the airport in Vilnius with a prosecutor to question the arriving passengers, and the prime minister announced an investigation.

Bloomberg