Belarus’ president yesterday headed to Russia to seek assistance amid a bruising showdown with the EU over the diversion of a flight to arrest a dissident journalist, as Russian authorities refuse some European airlines entry if they avoid Belarusian airspace.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is set to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin at his Black Sea residence in Sochi for talks on closer economic ties, the Kremlin said.
Belarus provoked the EU’s outrage when Belarusian flight controllers on Sunday told the crew of a Ryanair jet flying from Greece to Lithuania there was a bomb threat and instructed it to land in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, where 26-year-old journalist Roman Protasevich was arrested along with his Russian girlfriend.
Photo: AP
Although Belarusian authorities claimed that Minsk had received a threatening e-mail from a ProtonMail address purportedly from the Palestinian group Hamas claiming that a bomb was on board flight FR4978, the e-mail provider posted on Twitter that after reviewing a leaked copy of the e-mail, they determined it was sent after the plane was diverted.
The EU responded by barring Belarusian carriers from its airspace and airports and advising European airlines to skirt Belarus.
The bloc’s foreign ministers agreed on Thursday to ramp up sanctions to target the country’s lucrative potash industry and other sectors of the Belarusian economy that are the main cash-earners for Lukashenko’s government.
EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell yesterday said the bloc was monitoring whether Russia was systematically refusing to let European airlines land if they avoided Belarus after several flights were canceled.
On Thursday, Austrian Airlines said it had canceled a Vienna-Moscow flight after Russian authorities did not approve a route change avoiding Belarusian airspace.
An Air France flight from Paris to Moscow on Wednesday had to be canceled for the same reason.
“We don’t know if it is case by case, specific cases or is a general norm from the Russian authorities in order to make the European planes overfly Belarus,” Borrell told journalists. “There were a couple of cases. Some planes that couldn’t land, couldn’t take off, but frankly speaking, we have to wait and see in order to take measures.”
Austria denounced Russia, after it refused to allow the Austrian Airlines flight to be rerouted.
Austrian Airlines is part of Germany’s Lufthansa group, which on Thursday said that all its airlines were “currently avoiding Belarusian airspace.”
Scheduled flights to Moscow and Saint Petersburg continued, it said.
The International Civil Aviation Organization Council on Thursday said it would “undertake a fact-finding investigation of this event” to determine if there had been any breach of international aviation law by a member country.
A nervous-looking Protasevich was last seen in a video released by Belarusian authorities on Monday in which he was seen supposedly admitting to helping to organize mass unrest, a charge that could land him in jail for 15 years.
“I want you to relay our appeal everywhere, throughout the world, to government representatives, to EU countries, to EU leaders, to US leaders: I am appealing, I am begging, help me free my son,” his mother, Natalia Protasevich, told journalists in Warsaw.
Roman’s father, Dmitry Protasevich, on Thursday said that his son was “a tough man” and “a hero.”
“Throughout his life he fought for the truth and passed it on to people, which is why Lukashenko committed this despicable act,” he said.
The couple and their lawyer confirmed that they have not had any communication with their son since his arrest.
Additional reporting by AFP
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