The European Union has agreed to impose sanctions against Belarus, including banning its airlines from using the air space and airports of the 27-nation bloc, amid fury over the forced diversion of a passenger jet to arrest an opposition journalist. In what EU leaders called a brazen “hijacking” of the Ryanair plane flying from Greece to Lithuania on Sunday, they also demanded the immediate release of the journalist, Roman Protasevich, a key critic of authoritarian Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. A brief video clip of Mr Protasevich, who ran a popular messaging app that played a key role in helping organise massive protests against Mr Lukashenko, was shown on Belarusian state television on Monday night, a day after he was removed from the Ryanair flight.