According to the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, the Belarus authorities forced a Ryanair commercial airliner to land in Minsk in order to arrest the leading opposition journalist Roman Protasevich, the former editor of the NEXTA Telegram channel, which is in opposition to the Lukashenko rule. By doing so, they have crossed “the red line” and therefore such actions cannot be left without an adequate answer.
Oleksiy Danylov stressed, “The downing of the passenger flight in Minsk Airport has undoubtedly been a well-planned special operation the full responsibility for which lies with Aleksandr Lukashenko”.
He went on to say, “Justice that is constantly trampled upon is a sentence to all kinds of authoritarian ‘leaders’, even if the sentence has been delayed in time. As the history of aviation flights shows, adventurous decisions made by a dictator lead to a tremendous loss of human lives”.
The decision to send a fighter jet MiG-29 to intercept the commercial plane in order to force it down in Minsk can be called an act of state terrorism which could lead to a catastrophe in the air, Danylov said.
“Since our country is in the state of war, the leadership has made a decision conditioned by national security interests. That is why on the instruction of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the government has ordered to terminate direct flights between Ukraine and the Republic of Belarus. Also, Ukrainian planes will be banned from flying to Belarus and over its territory”, Danylov stressed.
Thus, the Cabinet of Ministers at its extraordinary meeting held on May 25 passed a decision to stop flights to Belarus from the midnight of May 26. Ukrainian airlines and aircraft will be banned from flying over Belarus. The State Border Guard Service has also been instructed to stop the registration of passengers travelling from or to Belarus at airport customs checkpoints.
During the first day of a summit meeting that is held in Brussels, leaders of European Union countries prohibited Belarus national airlines from operating in the bloc’s airspace. The bloc urged European airlines to avoid Belarus’ airspace and imposed sanctions on Aleksandr Lukashenko. The British government has made the same decision.
Predictably, Russia has sided with the authorities of Minsk. At first, one has to look into the incident and then decide about the punishment, Dmitri Peskov, the press secretary of the Russian President, commented on the decision of the bloc to avoid flights to Belarus.
In the meantime, Ukraine has offered foreign partners to use its airspace instead of the closed Belarus’s air access. “We are ready to provide maximum assistance to countries and private companies in rerouting their flights over our airspace”, said Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov.
Background: On May 23, a Ryanair plane flying from Athens to Vilnius, Lithuania, was ordered to land in Minsk, the capital of Belarus. The reason for the emergency landing was a bomb threat, although no bomb was found aboard the plane.
After the plane was forced to land, Roman Protasevich, the founder of the opposition Telegram channel NEXTA, was arrested.
Lukashenko personally sent the fighter jet to intercept the Ryanair flight, according to his news services. Leader of Belarus opposition Svetlana Tikhanovskaya argues that “it has been an operation of the special services to seize the plane with the aim of arresting the activist and blogger Protasevich”.
The International Civil Aviation Organization is going to investigate the circumstances involving the forced landing of the Ryanair plane in Minsk.
The newspaper Voice of Ukraine
