Belarus-Ryanair-Live-UpdatesFor Belarus, a Brazen Plane Interception Begins to Carry a Cost

This briefing has ended. You can follow our coverage of the Belarusian plane diversion here.

The E.U. moves quickly to isolate Belarus, denouncing its plane interception.

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A protest by Belarusians living in Poland in support of Roman Protasevich on Monday.Credit...Wojtek Radwanski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The European Union on Monday called on all E.U.- based airlines to stop flying over Belarus and began the process of banning Belarusian airlines from flying over the bloc’s airspace or landing in its airports — effectively severing the country’s air connections to Western Europe.

The action, announced Monday evening during a summit of European Union leaders in Brussels, was prompted by Belarus’s forced landing of a commercial flight between Greece and Lithuania a day earlier.

After diverting the plane to Minsk, the Belarusian authorities arrested Roman Protasevich, a young Belarusian. His partner, Sofia Sapega, was also not allowed to reboard the Ryanair flight.

E.U. leaders called for their “immediate release” and demanded that “their freedom of movement be guaranteed.”

It is not the first time the bloc has moved against Belarus’s strongman leader, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko.

Even before the airplane incident, it had imposed sanctions on Mr. Lukashenko and some of his associates after Belarusian elections last year and the violent crackdown that followed. European officials dismissed the vote as neither free nor fair.

On Monday, outraged over the forced landing of the Irish-based airline’s jetliner, European leaders moved to ratchet up the pressure on the regime.

In addition to the aviation measures, they also pledged to add new economic sanctions against the Minsk government, but those can be legally cumbersome, and will most likely take longer to enforce than the aviation-focused measures.

After huddling for a closed-door meeting — with mobile devices banned to ensure complete privacy — the leaders of the European Union’s 27 member countries reached their decision to cut Belarus's air links with uncharacteristic swiftness.

Consensus on fraught issues generally does not come easily, or quickly, for the bloc. But given the brazenness of the Belarusian actions, few raised serious objections to this course of action, E.U. officials said.

Arriving for the meeting in Brussels, leader after leader had pledged a strong response.

“It’s madness!” declared Xavier Bettel, the prime minister of Luxembourg. “It’s like something out of a very bad movie. It shows the state of the regime.”

The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, called the airline interception — complete with warplane — and the forced landing, as well as the arrest of the young journalist, an “utterly unacceptable hijacking.”

President Gitanas Nauseda of Lithuania, the flight’s final destination and home to Mr. Protasevich, called the action “state terrorism.”

Ms. von der Leyen said the European Union was ready to invest three billion euros in Belarus if a democratic transition led by the opposition took place.

Analysts had predicted that the E.U. might be reluctant to ban flights over Belarus because such a move would create difficulties for European airlines. Already, airlines are avoiding Ukraine, the country’s southern neighbor, because of its conflict with Russia.

Putting Belarusian air space off limits as well presents serious routing difficulties for flights from Europe to Asia.

“Flying to Asia from Europe without crossing Belarus is likely too costly and challenging,” analysts from Eurasia Group, a research firm, wrote in a note on Monday.

The E.U. has also asked a United Nations agency, the International Civil Aviation Organization, to investigate the incident. The Montreal-based agency scheduled an urgent meeting for Thursday, but the inquiry may take months to complete.

Passengers recall the fear that gripped the dissident journalist as their flight was diverted.

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Diverted Ryanair Flight Passengers Speak After Journalist’s Arrest

Passengers on Ryanair Flight 4978, which a Belarusian fighter jet forced to land in Minsk, spoke after reaching their original destination in Lithuania.

We are very tired. We were eight hours there. We didn’t get any information, what happened, only what we could find on the internet. We sat there with no information. We didn’t have any information, neither from Ryanair, nor from Minsk. But only when we got there. Before that, it was horrible, because we were kept for three hours without anything. Reporter: “Some passengers informed about German shepherd dogs that were used on the plane.” German, Labradors, many dogs. Yes, on everything. At one moment, we just changed the direction of the flight. And we go down, and to the left. After, let’s say, two and a half minutes, the captain and the crew said that we’re going to land in Minsk, without any reason why. When it was announced that we were going to land in Minsk, so Roman stands up, to open the, let’s say, the luggage door, take the luggage, and was trying to split the things, like computer, give it to a girlfriend, iPhone, or whatever, list goes on, take to the girlfriend. I think he a made a small mistake because he was around plenty of people. So he could give them things, not to the girlfriend, which was also, I think, arrested. So he could have given it to me or to other passengers. And then we can, let’s say, deliver this now, when we come back.

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Passengers on Ryanair Flight 4978, which a Belarusian fighter jet forced to land in Minsk, spoke after reaching their original destination in Lithuania.CreditCredit...Petras Malukas/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The tray tables were being raised and the seat backs returned to the upright position as passengers on Ryanair Flight 4978 prepared for the scheduled landing in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius. Then, suddenly, the plane made an abrupt U-turn.

There was no explanation given.

It would be roughly 15 minutes before the pilot came over the intercom and announced that the plane would be diverting to Minsk, the capital of Belarus, according to those on board.

For many passengers, it seemed, at first, it was most likely just one of those unexpected delays that can be part of airline travel — perhaps a technical problem, some speculated.

For one passenger, however, the situation was clear. And frightening.

Roman Protasevich, a prominent Belarusian opposition journalist who had been living in exile since 2019, started to panic.

“He panicked because we were about to land in Minsk,” Marius Rutkauskas, who was sitting one row ahead of Mr. Protasevich, told the Lithuanian broadcaster LRT upon arrival in Vilnius. “He said: ‘I know that death penalty awaits me in Belarus.’”

Once in Belarus, Mr. Protasevich’s worries appeared more real than ever. The plane was surrounded by Soviet-looking officials in green uniforms, along with dogs, fire crews and technical workers from the airport.

Saulius Danauskas, a passenger who spoke to Delfi, a news website, after arriving safely in Vilnius, said it quickly became apparent to him that the notion of a bomb threat was all a ruse.

“When we landed people were standing around the plane doing nothing, looking pleased with themselves,” Mr. Danauskas said. “They didn’t let us out for half an hour,” he added. “If there was a bomb on the plane, why would they not let us out?”

Passengers were eventually told to descend in groups of five with their luggage, which was thoroughly checked by security officials.

Mr. Protasevich’s luggage was checked twice, passengers recalled. Then a security officer escorted him to the terminal, where he was arrested.

Most of the rest of the passengers were kept standing in a dark corridor for three hours. Some had to stand with their children. Guarded by security officials, they had no access to food, water or a toilet.

In retrospect, passengers noted how weird it all was.

Mantas, a passenger on the plane, told a Lithuanian news website that the pilot was “visibly nervous” during the landing in Minsk.

Alyona Alymova, one of the passengers, wrote about the experience in a Facebook post, noting that for much of the time there was only “light anxiety.”

“There was no clear understanding of what was going on,” she wrote.

Some passengers learned about the bomb threat only hours later, when they could connect to the internet.

In an Instagram post, one passenger said that they were “treated as prisoners in Minsk.” Hours later, they were allowed in an airport lounge area with a small cafeteria.

“I want to see who will be responsible for this chaos,” she said.

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Leader of Belarus signs new laws to crush dissent as Russia offers support.

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President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus in April. Rather than try to blunt diplomatic fallout on Monday, he signed new laws cracking down further on dissent.Credit...Pool photo by Sergei Sheleg

Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, the strongman ruler of Belarus and the most enduring leader in the former Soviet Union, appeared undeterred by the international outcry that has erupted after his country forced a civilian passenger jet to land and then arrested a dissident journalist who was onboard.

Rather than try to blunt diplomatic fallout on Monday, he signed new laws cracking down further on dissent.

The country placed bans on publishing unauthorized public opinion polls, on livestreaming unauthorized protests, and even on posting links to “banned” information.

The Belarusian Foreign Ministry’s spokesman, Anatoly Glaz, insisted that what happened to the jet was in strict accordance with aviation rules and said the country was prepared to host international experts “in order to rule out any insinuations.”

Russia, Mr. Lukashenko’s main ally, stood by him.

Maria Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman, compared Sunday’s incident to the forced diversion of a plane carrying Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, which made an unscheduled landing in Austria when he was flying home from Moscow in 2013 after other European countries refused it permission to refuel or to use their airspace.

“I’m shocked that the West is calling the incident in Belarusian airspace ‘shocking,’” Ms. Zakharova wrote on Facebook.

Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, also refused to join the chorus of condemnation in the West.

“The international aviation authorities need to evaluate whether or not this followed or did not follow international norms,” he told reporters. “I cannot comment on anything in this situation.”

Belarus grows more isolated as countries weigh punishment for the Ryanair flight force-down.

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The jetliner in Minsk on Sunday after it was forced down.Credit...Onliner.by, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A day after it brazenly forced down a commercial airline so it could seize a dissident journalist traveling on board, Belarus found itself increasingly isolated on Monday, as other countries considered measures that would effectively make Belarusian airspace off limits to airlines.

“The reaction should be swift and be severe,” Belgium’s prime minister, Alexander de Croo, declared as European leaders prepared to gather in Brussels to discuss the next steps.

Condemnation grew over the diversion of the Ryanair flight, which had been ordered by the country’s strongman leader so that a Belarusian journalist traveling from Greece to Lithuania through Belarusian airspace could be detained.

President Biden was briefed Monday morning about the incident. “We think this was a brazen affront to international peace and security,” said the White House spokeswoman, Jen Psaki.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said Belarus had “endangered the lives of more than 120 passengers, including U.S. citizens.” He demanded the “immediate release” of the journalist, Roman Protasevich and a full investigation.

Flight-tracking data showed that airlines have already started to avoid the Eastern European country’s airspace, Reuters reported, but some European officials were calling for a formal ban.

Britain ordered that “airlines avoid Belarusian airspace in order to keep passengers safe,” the transportation secretary, Grant Shapps, wrote on Twitter. Mr. Shapps also said that the operating permit for Belavia Belarusian Airlines was being suspended.

In Ukraine, Belarus’s neighbor to the south, President Volodymyr Zelensky directed his government to ban flights from Belarus and to close the Belarus airspace to flights to or from Ukraine.

And the Lithuanian government called for Belarusian airspace to be closed to international flights in response to what it called a hijacking “by military force.”

Michael O’Leary, the chief executive of Ryanair, an Irish-based low-cost carrier, called the operation, which was directed by President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus, a “state-sponsored hijacking.”

Sofia Sapega, the girlfriend of the arrested journalist, was also detained when the plane landed in Minsk on Sunday after a bogus bomb threat during its flight from Athens to Vilnius, Lithuania, her university in the Lithuanian capital said.

Ms. Sapega, a Russian citizen, was detained at the Minsk airport along with Mr. Protasevich under “groundless and made-up conditions,” the European Humanities University in Vilnius said in a statement demanding her release.

On Monday, the Belarusian Interior Ministry said Mr. Protasevich was being held in jail, Reuters reported. A Telegram channel that backs Mr. Lukashenko published a video of the journalist saying that he was fine and that he was confessing.

Lawyers seeking to help Mr. Protasevich said he was believed to be in a jail in Minsk operated by the Belarusian intelligence service. The Russian Embassy in Minsk said that Belarus had notified it of Ms. Sapega’s detention.

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Roman Protasevich at a court hearing in 2017.Credit...Reuters

Five people who boarded in Athens were not on the plane when it finally arrived in Vilnius, the Lithuanian police said on Monday.

Mr. O’Leary said some of the passengers may have been agents of the Belarusian intelligence service, which is still known by its Soviet-era initials.

“We believe there were some K.G.B. agents offloaded at the airport as well,” Mr. O’Leary told Irish radio on Monday.

Mr. O’Leary said Ryanair was in the process of debriefing its crew .

The Lithuanian police said they had opened a criminal investigation, on suspicion of hijacking and kidnapping. Of 126 passengers who took off from Athens, 121 arrived in Vilnius, the police said. (Officials had earlier said there were about 170 passengers on the plane, and that six had stayed behind in Minsk.)

The Lithuanian police spoke to the pilots after they landed in Vilnius on Sunday evening, Renatas Pozela, the Lithuanian police commissioner general, said in a telephone interview.

Police investigators would be interviewing the passengers this week, he said.

“The pilots were the priority,” Mr. Pozela said. “We wanted to hear their stories. How did they see the situation? What did they do? Were there other planes?”

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Who is Roman Protasevich, the detained journalist?

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Roman Protasevich is a co-founder of a channel on the social media app Telegram that become a popular conduit for President Aleksandr Lukashenko’s foes to share information and organize demonstrations.Credit...EPA, via Shutterstock

A day after the dissident journalist Roman Protasevich was detained in a plot that most Hollywood producers would have dismissed as improbably dramatic, there has been no word about where he is, how long he could be held, or what will happen to him.

Mr. Protasevich, an exiled opposition figure, was taken into custody on Sunday after the flight he was on was intercepted while traveling from Athens to Vilnius, Lithuania, by a MIG-29 fighter jet under orders from the strongman president of Belarus, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, and diverted to Minsk.

Mr. Protasevich is a co-founder and a former editor of the NEXTA channel on the social media platform Telegram, which has become a popular conduit for Mr. Lukashenko’s foes to share information and organize demonstrations.

Mr. Protasevich became a dissident as a teenager, drawing scrutiny from law enforcement. He was expelled from a prestigious school for participating in a protest rally in 2011.

He fled the country in 2019, fearing arrest. But he has continued to roil Mr. Lukashenko’s regime while living in exile in Lithuania, to the extent that he was charged in November last year with inciting public disorder and social hatred.

Also in November, the government’s main security agency in Belarus, called the K.G.B., placed Mr. Protasevich’s name on a list of terrorists. If he is convicted of terrorism, he could face the death penalty.

The charges of inciting public disorder and social hatred carry a punishment of more than 12 years in prison.

Sofia Sapega, a 23-year-old Russian citizen and the girlfriend of Mr. Protasevich, was traveling with him on the flight, and she was also detained, according to a statement from the European Humanities University in Lithuania, where she is a student. The university said she was detained on “groundless” conditions and pleaded for help in securing her release.

The flight of Ryanair 4978.

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An international arrivals board at Vilnius Airport, Lithuania, on Sunday, with the diverted flight at the top.Credit...Andrius Sytas/Reuters

Shortly after Ryanair Flight 4978 crossed in the airspace of Belarus, an alarming message came crackling over the radio.

The pilots were told of “a potential security threat on board.” A possible bomb.

The plane, headed from Athens in Greece to Vilnius in Lithuania, would have to be diverted to Minsk, the capital of Belarus.

And if there was any doubt about the seriousness of the situation, the pilots only needed to look out of their window, where a MIG-29 fighter had suddenly appeared to escort them.

Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, the ruler of Belarus who is often referred to as “Europe’s last dictator,” personally ordered the fighter jet to intercept the passenger plane — a fact his office proudly noted in a news release.

According to the statement, Mr. Lukashenko gave an “unequivocal order” to “make the plane do a U-turn and land.”

Source: Flightradar24

By Scott Reinhard

After the plane was forced to land, Roman Protasevich, a dissident journalist, was arrested. His girlfriend, Sofia Sapega, was also on the flight, and she, too, did not board the plane again.

The country’s interior ministry announced Mr. Protasevich’s arrest in a statement that was later deleted from its official Telegram channel.

After about seven hours on the ground in Minsk, the passenger jet, a Boeing 737-800, took off for Vilnius, landing there safely 35 minutes later.

No bomb was found on board, according to law enforcement authorities in Belarus. The Investigative Committee, Belarus’s top investigative agency, said it had opened a criminal case into a false bomb threat.

“Nothing untoward was found,” Ryanair said in statement.

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Airlines Start Skirting Belarus After It Forced Down a Plane

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A jetliner arriving in Lithuania, its original destination, after its diversion by Belarus. Ryanair’s chief, Michael O’Leary, condemned the actions of the Belarusian authorities.Credit...Petras Malukas/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The brazen decision by Belarus’s president this weekend to force a commercial flight to land in order to arrest a dissident journalist shows how abruptly aviation can become entangled in geopolitics, sometimes with dangerous potential consequences.

Fallout from the episode was swift. A day after dispatching a fighter jet to ground the Ryanair flight, the country’s strongman president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, drew reprimands and flight bans from countries and airlines around the world.

The European Union on Monday called on airlines based in the bloc to stop flying over Belarus as it also worked to ban the country’s airlines from flying over E.U. airspace. Britain imposed similar restrictions, while several major airlines said they would stop traversing the country altogether.

“Due to the current dynamic situation, we are suspending the operation in Belarusian airspace for the time being,” Tal Muscal, a spokesman for Lufthansa, said in a statement. The German airline was joined by its sister carrier Austrian Airlines in stopping flights over Belarus. Both are among the top airlines connecting the country to others, according to Cirium, an aviation data provider.

Air France and KLM later said they too would suspend flights going through Belarus airspace, Reuters reported. Finnair said it would do the same. “The change will make flight time a bit longer,” the Finnish national carrier said on Twitter.

Some analysts say the moves to isolate Belarus will be difficult and expensive for European companies. Airlines are already avoiding Ukraine, the country’s southern neighbor, because of conflict with Russia, and putting Belarusian airspace off limits presents complications on some flights.

Avoiding Belarus in north-south flights is feasible, analysts from Eurasia Group, a research and consulting firm, wrote in a note on Monday. But skirting the country while flying between Europe and Asia would prove costly, they said before the European Union’s announcement.

Last week, about 3,300 flights flew over Belarus, only about a fifth of which landed in or departed from the country, according to Flightradar24, a tracking service.

Though not a major European hub, Belarus’s capital, Minsk, is served by several international airlines, including Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines and Turkish Airlines. U.S. airlines like American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines offer flights to Minsk through partnerships with European carriers and Belavia, the Belarusian airline.

In addition to seeking limits on flights, European officials called for the immediate release of the journalist, Roman Protasevich, who was detained on Sunday with his partner, Sofia Sapega. His arrest was aggressive even for Mr. Lukashenko, who claimed an improbably large victory in an election last year and was already subject to European Union sanctions.

Airlines are often forced to adjust operations in response to major disruptions, geopolitical and otherwise. This month, for example, several U.S. airlines canceled flights to and from Israel as a conflict there escalated. Some carriers also adjusted procedures, including adding fueling stops, after the hacking of a fuel pipeline company that serves airports on the East Coast of the United States.

In 2014, nearly 300 people were killed when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over Ukraine, where hostilities were raging, on its way to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam. Western governments blamed the Russian government and Russian-backed rebels fighting the Ukrainian government, while Moscow denied involvement. The Netherlands sued Russia in the European Court of Human Rights last year in an effort to secure evidence that would be useful to families of the victims.

From 2017 until this year, Qatar Airways was forced to avoid airspace over Saudi Arabia and several neighboring countries after they imposed an air, land and sea embargo against Qatar. In some cases, that meant flying longer routes around the Arabian Peninsula. The neighbors accused Qatar of supporting terrorism. Qatar has denied those accusations.

The movement to isolate Belarus will have little effect on U.S. passenger airlines, which rarely fly over the country, according to Flightradar24. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken condemned the forced landing of the Ryanair flight, calling it a “shocking act” that “endangered the lives of more than 120 passengers, including U.S. citizens.” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the safety of U.S. flights over Belarus should be assessed.

But cargo carriers could be affected. On Sunday, for example, more than a dozen flights operated by U.S. airlines flew over Belarus, according to Flightradar24, including five by FedEx, four by UPS and two by Atlas Air.

In a statement, UPS said that its network remained unaffected, but that it was “evaluating other flight route options that will provide for the safety of our crews and aircraft, as well as maintain service for our customers” in case it had to make changes. FedEx said it was “closely monitoring the issue.”

The International Federation of Air Line Pilots’ Associations and the European Cockpit Association said in a statement that aviation authorities should investigate what had happened and “take swift measures” to prevent similar disruptions. They described Sunday’s episode as a “hazard to the safety of passengers and crew.”

Ryanair’s chief executive, Michael O’Leary, on Monday condemned the actions of the Belarusian authorities, who ordered the plane, flying from Athens to Vilnius, Lithuania, to land in Minsk.

“This was a case of state-sponsored hijacking, state-sponsored piracy,” Mr. O’Leary told interviewers on Newstalk, an Irish radio broadcaster.

The airline doesn’t fly much over Belarus, he said, adding that it would be “a very minor adjustment” to move routes over Poland instead. Ryanair, a discount Irish airline, describes itself as Europe’s largest airline group.

Even before the European Union’s announcement on Monday, AirBaltic, the Latvian national airline, and Wizz Air in Hungary said they would avoid flying over Belarus.

Kate Kelly contributed reporting.

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