Belarus 'diverts' Ryanair flight

[ian16th]

Belarus 'diverts Ryanair flight to arrest journalist'.

[Rwy in Sight]

I am surprised to realize how provocative / rude / humiliating for the countries involved is the action of Belarus, a country with apparently little political and military strength but with a leadership determined to impose its views on its citizen. And a leader who knows there is little EU collectively can do to react to the action.

[Ex-Ascot]

Appears that he was nearer to destination than Minsk. Do we assume that he was forced to go into Minsk by military action?

[Pontius Navigator]

I seem to remember the cousins have taken similar action diverting a transatlantic flight bound for further south into the US.

[TheGreenGoblin]

Appears that he was nearer to destination than Minsk. Do we assume that he was forced to go into Minsk by military action?

The crew were informed of a bomb threat and intercepted by a Mig fighter! Complete breach of international law at many levels!

My one and only experience of Belorussians was in a hotel in Cardiff where the Belorussian football team and management were staying and who contrived to become involved in an all Belorussian brawl in the lobby after losing a match to Wales. Being a sophisticated and cultured, civilised South African, I tut-tutted and repaired to the bar and let the Slavic barbarians get on with their internecine battle!

[unifoxos]

Airlines should get together and stop all flights in to, out of, and over Belarus.

[TheGreenGoblin]

Airlines should get together and stop all flights in to, out of, and over Belarus.

+1

[Undried Plum]

Persecution of honest journalists happens here in Scotland too. Craig Murray is an exemplar.

[EA01]

Airlines should get together and stop all flights in to, out of, and over Belarus.

Oh yeah....like that is going to happen


Ya reckon Lakoshenko (?) didn't do this without tacit approval from Putin?

He's been pushing limits for a while no?...without much backlash at all....MH17 anyone? Crimea?....hell even the poisonings on UK soil....

[Undried Plum]

I greatly doubt the UK gumment official story about Skripal being poisoned by Russians and not Brits.

[EA01]

You are a far smarter & evidently by way of crypto currency (still can't get my head around) vastly wealthier person than I UP, .......you are saying Skripal & His Daughter were poisoned by the British Government?? Is that right??

[Ex-Ascot]

A difficult one for the Captain. Almost at destination and no bang so unlikely to be a bomb but a Mig on your wing. Guess he didn't have much choice. I have had one bomb threat which I ignored and one missile threat which I countered with defence measures. Nothing happened.

[tango15]

A long duty day for the crew as well, I imagine. Fortunately the last leg was a short one, but you wouldn't want to leave the aircraft, given the background to it all. Locking it up and going to a Soviet-era hotel for the night was not an option.

[tango15]

I greatly doubt the UK gumment official story about Skripal being poisoned by Russians and not Brits.

Apologies for going off topic, but I was always amazed that, given his background, they put him in a house in Salisbury. I suppose it was because his handler, Pablo Miller, lived nearby, but Porton Down and Boscombe are just down the road - arguably two of the most sensitive pieces of real estate in the UK and it was known that prior to the poisoning, he was regularly visiting the Russian embassy.

On the subject of the Ryanair flight, it will be interesting to see what, if anything, the EU will do about this. A Polish-registered aircraft belonging to an Irish company flying between two EU capitals with (presumably) a Polish crew.

No doubt Frau Merkel will be on the 'phone to Vlad to complain on behalf of the EU, but I don't think she'll get much change of out him. 'Nothing to do with me, guv.'

[ian16th]

Discounting the legitimacy or not of the current government of Belarus.

When an aircraft is in the airspace of a country, is it not subject to the laws of that country?

Isn't a government entitled to order an aircraft to land?

[TheGreenGoblin]

Discounting the legitimacy or not of the current government of Belarus.

When an aircraft is in the airspace of a country, is it not subject to the laws of that country?

Isn't a government entitled to order an aircraft to land?

One would have to wade through the Chicago Convention (and other relevant treaties) but given that this interception was based upon bogus reasons it was most likely an illegal act.

https://www.icao.int/publications/pages/doc7300.aspx

Article 16
Search of aircraft
The appropriate authorities of each of the
contracting States shall have the right, without
unreasonable delay, to search aircraft of the
other contracting States on landing or departure,
and to inspect the certificates and other
documents prescribed by this Convention.{7

Article 3bis
a. The contracting States recognize that every
State must refrain from resorting to the use of
weapons against civil aircraft in flight and that,
in case of interception, the lives of persons on
board and the safety of aircraft must not be
endangered. This provision shall not be
interpreted as modifying in any way the rights and
obligations of States set forth in the Charter of the
United Nations

FT Comment...

In full for those who can't access the FT

The “rules-based international order” is a dull phrase beloved by diplomats that can sound like a meaningless cliché. Boris Johnson, Britain’s prime minister, even briefly considered instructing his officials to stop using the term.

But if anyone doubts the need for a rules-based international order, they should consider what has just happened to Ryanair flight FR4978 from Greece to Lithuania. The plane was crossing Belarus when it was forced to land in Minsk — allowing the government there to detain Roman Protasevich, a prominent Belarusian journalist, who has chronicled the brutal repression in his home country. The arrest was apparently made on the direct orders of Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus’s president — who has been fighting for his political life since stealing his country’s presidential election last year.

Belarus is a small country with a population of just under 10m. But this hijacking and kidnap by the Lukashenko regime sets a dangerous global precedent. It will be watched closely by much larger countries that also like to pursue their domestic enemies overseas — in particular Russia (which is Belarus’s closest ally), China and Iran.

Passengers flying from Europe to Asia will often have glanced at their flight maps and realised that they are crossing over Russia or Iran. What was once an interesting geographical observation may now be a cause for slight concern. If even tiny Belarus can demand that a plane divert to Minsk, what is to stop the Iranians from compelling a plane to land in Tehran, or the Russians from forcing a jet down over Siberia?

Once the precedent is established, the potential threat will extend well beyond countries’ own citizens — and even beyond their own borders. Those who have wondered why it is worth disputing China’s claim to sovereignty over the whole of the South China Sea may now understand the point better. Roughly one-third of the world’s maritime trade crosses those waters. If China could claim the right to intercept any ship or plane crossing the South China Sea, it would have a stranglehold over global trade.

The threat of detention extends not just to Chinese, Russian or Iranian dissidents living abroad. Potentially, it extends to foreigners who have displeased those regimes. The Russian government has made persistent efforts to secure the arrest of Bill Browder, a US-born British investor who drove the successful campaign to impose “Magnitsky sanctions” on Moscow.

One of the Europeans sanctioned by China recently told me that he was not concerned by his inability to travel to China itself. But he did worry that Beijing might try to arrange for his arrest, in transit, in a third country. “After all”, as my contact put it, “they’ll think that’s the kind of thing that superpowers do.”

That thought raises the unfortunate precedent set by the US through its policies of drone strikes and “extraordinary renditions”, during its “war on terror”. The Americans can point out that this kind of treatment was reserved for those who used or planned actual violence against the US or its allies. But, to invert the old saying, one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist. Belarus had placed Protasevich on a terrorist watchlist.

Nobody reasonable should accept the Belarusian (or Chinese or Russian) equation of peaceful dissent with terrorism. But America has encouraged the idea that powerful countries can reach out beyond their borders and grab people.

Those powers are alarming even when exercised by the US — a law-governed country committed to freedom of speech. When they are claimed by one-party states, dictatorships and assorted strongman leaders around the globe, they are a recipe for a much more dangerous and lawless world.

The disturbing reality is that authoritarian countries are increasingly resorting to what Freedom House, a US-based pro-democracy organisation, calls in a report released in February, “transnational repression”.

The report pointed to six countries that use methods such as “assassinations, illegal deportations [and] abductions” to silence dissent overseas: China, Turkey, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran — with China highlighted as the country that conducts the “most sophisticated, global and comprehensive campaign of transnational repression in the world”. The victims of these campaigns include Gui Minhai, a Chinese-born Swedish citizen, who had published books on the private lives of prominent members of the Chinese Communist party. He was kidnapped in Thailand in 2015 and later sent to prison in China. Another is Paul Rusesabagina, a Rwandan political activist, kidnapped in Dubai in 2020, and then put on trial in Rwanda on terrorism charges.

The action taken by Belarus represents a flagrant escalation of this trend. But this dangerous moment also represents an opportunity to arrest the slide into international lawlessness.

The EU, the US, the UK and others should now act together to ensure that Belarus’s move is seen to have consequences — for example by announcing that Belarusian airspace is unsafe and then banning international flights in or out of the country. If Lukashenko behaves like an international outlaw, he should be treated as one. It is time to defend international law and order, before it is too late.

gideon.rachman@ft.com

[Boac]

What a dreadful situation for all. It would have been a very brave Captain that ignored the order to land in at Minsk, thus possibly risking all lives on board.

There will be those armchair experts who will say he was 'so close' he should have continued to VNO, but unless he had FULL intelligence on the situation, including the presence of 3 or 4 'agents' on board plus the FULL relevance of the presence of Protasevich on board he made the only and correct decision.

Yes, with that invaluable hindsight it would be surprising if the fighter had been ordered to shoot down the 737 with all the loss of life and political upheaval that would ensue, but try sitting 'up front' knowing you have been ordered to land by an armed fighter and brushing that off.

[TheGreenGoblin]

What a dreadful situation for all. It would have been a very brave Captain that ignored the order to land in at Minsk, thus possibly risking all lives on board.

There will be those armchair experts who will say he was 'so close' he should have continued to VNO, but unless he had FULL intelligence on the situation, including the presence of 3 or 4 'agents' on board plus the FULL relevance of the presence of Protasevich on board he made the only and correct decision.

Yes, with that invaluable hindsight it would be surprising if the fighter had been ordered to shoot down the 737 with all the loss of life and political upheaval that would ensue, but try sitting 'up front' knowing you have been ordered to land by an armed fighter and brushing that off.

+1

[ian16th]

What a dreadful situation for all. It would have been a very brave Captain that ignored the order to land in at Minsk, thus possibly risking all lives on board.

There will be those armchair experts who will say he was 'so close' he should have continued to VNO, but unless he had FULL intelligence on the situation, including the presence of 3 or 4 'agents' on board plus the FULL relevance of the presence of Protasevich on board he made the only and correct decision.

Yes, with that invaluable hindsight it would be surprising if the fighter had been ordered to shoot down the 737 with all the loss of life and political upheaval that would ensue, but try sitting 'up front' knowing you have been ordered to land by an armed fighter and brushing that off.

+1

+1 more

[Undried Plum]

I greatly doubt the UK gumment official story about Skripal being poisoned by Russians and not Brits.

Apologies for going off topic, but I was always amazed that, given his background, they put him in a house in Salisbury. I suppose it was because his handler, Pablo Miller, lived nearby, but Porton Down and Boscombe are just down the road - arguably two of the most sensitive pieces of real estate in the UK and it was known that prior to the poisoning, he was regularly visiting the Russian embassy.

My apologies too.

I shall either start a new topic or otherwise contrive an opportunity to express my belief and disbeliefs on the matter of Skripal.