What happened in Belarus?And why a reporter got off the plane and escaped and was arrested As civilian planes fled the airspace, Belarus’s isolation deepened, the European Union enacted new sanctions and officials expressed concern about the welfare of opposition journalists. Roman Protasevich was arrested on Sunday because he was removed from a plane transferred to Minsk, the capital of Belarus, in what the West calls a state-sponsored hijacking. The plane flew from Greece to Lithuania. Take a quick look at how we got here: Why does Belarus have objections? The President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, has been in power since 1994 and is the longest serving ruler in Europe.