Belarus faces sanctions threat over ‘state piracy’

A Belarusian dog handler checks luggages off a Ryanair Boeing 737-8AS parked on Minsk International Airport's apron in Minsk, on May 23, 2021. (PHOTO / AFP)

KYIV/VILNIUS – Several airlines said on Monday they would avoid Belarusian air space after Belarus scrambled a warplane to intercept a Ryanair jetliner and arrest a dissident journalist in an act denounced by Western powers as "state piracy".

Western leaders reached for the strongest language to condemn Sunday's incident, in which a Belarusian warplane intercepted a flight between Greece and Lithuania and forced it down in Minsk, where a dissident journalist was arrested.

Countries called for the release of 26-year-old Roman Protasevich, whose social media feed from exile has been one of the last remaining independent outlets for news about the country since a mass crackdown on dissent last year.

The EU will consider the consequences of this action, including taking measures against those responsible.

Josep Borrell, EU foreign policy chief

The European Union's (EU) executive on Monday summoned the Belarusian ambassador over the incident.

The EU was considering responding to the incident by limiting international air traffic over Belarus and restricting its ground transport, and could tighten sanctions already in place on the former Soviet republic.

"This was effectively aviation piracy, state sponsored," said Ireland's Foreign Minister Simon Coveney, using language that was echoed by a number of other countries as EU leaders prepared to discuss a response at a summit in Brussels.

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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the forced landing and arrest a "shocking act," and said President Joe Biden's administration was "coordinating with our partners on next steps".

NATO ambassadors will discuss the incident on Tuesday, an official with the Western military alliance said.

Meanwhile, the French presidency said a request had been sent to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to suspend international overflights over Belarusian air space. 

EU countries could ban Belavia from European airports and was considering other unspecified measure regarding ground transport links, an EU official said.

Some airlines and countries did not wait for guidance on how to respond to the flight from Greece to Lithuania being diverted as it flew through Belarusian air space.

Britain said it was issuing a notice to instruct British airlines to cease flights over Belarus and that it would suspend the air permit for Belarus's national carrier Belavia with immediate effect.

Latvian airline airBaltic and Scandinavian airline SAS said they would stop using Belarusian air space, and Cyprus-registered Avia Solutions said its Lithuania-based airlines would follow suit.

Lithuania's Transport Minister Marius Skuodis said Poland's LOT and Hungarian airline Wizzair would follow suit and announced that all flights to and from Lithuanian airports must from midnight GMT avoid Belarusian air space.

Still, the options for Western retaliation appear limited. 

The Montreal-based ICAO has no regulatory power, and the EU has no authority over flights taking off and landing in Belarus or flying over its air space, apart from direct flights that originate or land in Europe. Belarus has shrugged off previous rounds of EU and US financial sanctions.

Ahead of a scheduled meeting of the 27 EU national leaders in Brussels, Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte said she would push with partners to close the airspace of Belarus to international flights. She did not explain how this would be achieved.

She later proposed that institutions such as the European Investment Bank should not participate in projects that finance Minsk. Her government advised citizens to refrain from travel to Belarus and urged those already there to leave.

Belarus says it was acting in response to a bomb threat on the flight, although this turned out to be false. It said on Monday its ground controllers had given guidance to the flight but had not ordered it to land. State media reported the decision to intervene had been ordered personally by President Alexander Lukashenko.

READ MORE: Belarus' Lukashenko stages 'People's Assembly' for power

Russia accused the West of hypocrisy, noting that in 2013 a flight from Moscow carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales had been diverted to Austria after reports fugitive US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden might be on board.

Sanctions have had no effect

The EU and the United States had already imposed several rounds of financial sanctions against Minsk last year, which had no effect on the behaviour of long-serving leader Lukashenko, a close Russian ally who withstood mass demonstrations against his rule after a disputed election. 

Lukashenko denies election fraud. 

ICAO is strongly concerned by the apparent forced landing of a Ryanair flight and its passengers, which could be in contravention of the Chicago Convention," it said

The head of the foreign affairs committee in the British parliament, Tom Tugendhat, noting that the flight was between two members of both EU and the NATO military alliance, said: "If it's not an act of war, it's certainly a warlike act."

Belarus lies on the flight path of some important north-south routes in Europe as well as east-west routes between Europe and Asia.

ICAO, a UN body, said the incident may have contravened the core treaty that governs global aviation.

"ICAO is strongly concerned by the apparent forced landing of a Ryanair flight and its passengers, which could be in contravention of the Chicago Convention," it said. "We look forward to more information being officially confirmed by the countries and operators concerned."

Flying around Belarus would slow airlines down and cost them money, and apart from the few mainly from neighboring countries that announced action it was not clear whether others would do so unless required. KLM of the Netherlands said it had carried out a risk assessment and was making no changes for now.

Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary, who referred to the incident as a state-sponsored hijacking, said he believed security agents had been on the flight and had disembarked in Minsk. That would mean the operation had effectively been coordinated with spies operating on the ground in Greece.

"The EU will consider the consequences of this action, including taking measures against those responsible," EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a statement on Monday.

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said "the outrageous and illegal behaviour of the regime in Belarus will have consequences".

Minsk has shrugged off previous sanctions since last year, which consist mainly of adding various officials to black lists which restrict their right to travel or do business in Europe and the United States. The EU was already working on a fourth round before the Ryanair incident.

ALSO READ: Belarus opposition leader accused of terrorist plot

Additional steps could now include suspending overflights of EU airlines over Belarus or banning the Belarusian airline Belavia from landing at EU airports. An EU official said suspending ground transit could also be discussed.

In this March 26, 2017 file photo, Belarus police detain journalist Roman Protasevich, center, in Minsk, Belarus. (SERGEI GRITS / AP)

Protasevich's whereabouts were not made public. A university in Vilnius said one of its students, Sofia Sapega, 23, was traveling with him and had also been detained.

After Protasevich was arrested, flight 4978 was allowed to travel on to Vilnius, where weary passengers disembarked. One, who gave his name as Mantas, described the moment when the pilot had come on the intercom to tell passengers they were being diverted to Minsk, with no explanation. Protasevich immediately shot to his feet, knowing his time was up.

"Roman stood up, opened the luggage compartment, took luggage and was trying to split things," giving a laptop and phone to his female companion, Mantas told Reuters. Once the plane landed, police took Protasevich away.

"We saw from the window that Roman is standing alone, and one policeman with dog was trying to find something" in his luggage, Mantas said.

After security checks were made by local authorities, the aircraft later resumed its journey to Vilnius, Ryanair said.

The 26-year-old journalist worked for Poland-based online news service NEXTA, which broadcast footage of mass protests against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko last year via the Telegram messenger app at a time when it was hard for foreign media to do so.

Protasevich, who now works for a different Telegram channel called Belamova, is wanted in Belarus on extremism charges and stands accused of organising mass riots and of inciting social hatred, allegations he denies.

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