EU leaders have tried to bring Belarus closer to the bloc to encourage democratic reforms and reduce the influence of Russia but they have failed so far. On Monday, hours ahead of a previously planned summit, some EU leaders were threatening more sanctions from scrapping landing rights in the bloc for Belarus national airline to exclusions from sporting events.
The U.S. and the EU already have imposed sanctions on top Belarusian officials amid months of protests, which were triggered by Lukashenko’s reelection to a sixth presidential term in an August vote that the opposition rejected as rigged. More than 34,000 people have been arrested in Belarus since then, and thousands were brutally beaten.
West slams Belarus over jet diversion, journalist arrest
RAF CASERT and VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV, Associated Press
May 24, 2021
FacebookTwitterEmail 18
1of18FILE - In this Sunday, March 26, 2017 file photo, Belarus police detain journalist Raman Pratasevich, center, in Minsk, Belarus. Raman Pratasevich, a founder of a messaging app channel that has been a key information conduit for opponents of Belarus’ authoritarian president, has been arrested after an airliner in which he was riding was diverted to Belarus because of a bomb threat. The presidential press service said President Alexander Lukashenko personally ordered that a MiG-29 fighter jet accompany the Ryanair plane traveling from Athens, Greece, to Vilnius, Lithuania to the Minsk airport. Sergei Grits/APShow MoreShow Less
Western outrage has grown and the European Union has threatened more sanctions over the forced diversion of a plane to Belarus in order to arrest an opposition journalist.
The dramatic gambit apparently ordered by the country’s authoritarian president was denounced as state terrorism or sheer piracy.
Ryanair said Belarusian flight controllers told the crew there was a bomb threat against the plane as it was crossing through the country’s airspace and ordered it to land in the capital Minsk.
A Belarusian MiG-29 fighter jet was scrambled to escort the plane – in a brazen show of force by President Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled with an iron fist for more than a quarter of a century.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps (bottom right) has announced sanctions against Alexander Lukashenko s Belarus following a hijacking of a Ryanair flight THE Tory Transport Secretary has told the UK s independent aviation regulator to instruct planes to avoid Belarusian airspace following the forced diversion of a Ryanair flight on May 23. Grant Shapps also said that he has suspended the operating permit of Belavia, the flag carrier and national airline of Belarus. The Transport Secretary tweeted: “Following the forced diversion of a @Ryanair aircraft to Minsk yesterday, I’ve instructed [the UK Civil Aviation Authority] to request airlines avoid Belarusian airspace in order to keep passengers safe.
New coronavirus infections in the U.S. rose at the slowest pace of the pandemic in the past week, a sign the nation’s vaccination campaign is cutting down on the spread of the deadly pathogen.