Belarus diverts Ryanair flight to arrest journalist

Enkore · 23 May 2021 at 17:51

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57219860

So looks like another diplomatic conflict brewing in Europe... Many EU officials are calling for major action against Belarus and I'm sure Russia will be in there too as they are closely associated.

I think its despicable that something like that is allowed to happen.

I believe though that we should also not participate or support such actions ourselves (west).

There was a similar case in 2016 where Ukrainians forced a Belarus aircraft to return to arrest a Ukraine opposition member.

https://belarusinfocus.info/interna...ane-not-affect-belarusian-ukrainian-relations

No one heard of it I imagine as it was not condoned or reported at all.

Also a more home hitting one, 2013 incident where a Presidents plane was forced to land in the EU due to rumor's that Snowden was on it.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/03/edward-snowden-bolivia-plane-vienna

The reason I say this is because we have a habit of viewing events from one isolated angle in the west. Putin propaganda machine is already making rounds again. With the narrative look at west, they can do the same and no problem and yet if we do it - whole uproar against us. Which sadly is actually true.

I believe that for these actions to be fully effective we must be above them ourselves. Putin is smart and each time something like this happens its domestic propaganda galore.

Lastly, Ukraine themselves actually attempted to the same but failed in regards to capturing over 20 Russian soldiers who fought in the east for rebels. This is also making big news for domestic market as everyone is saying if Ukraine did it - EU/US would celebrate and say what a great achievement.

http://euromaidanpress.com/2020/08/...fficials-suspected-of-blowing-mid-special-op/

I am not defending Putin - on contrary - I believe that we are enabling his entrenchment in Russian politics by actions like this. We are not playing smart, he's using our actions for internal propaganda. I believe that if this continues heating up, the guy after Putin can very well be Hitler 2.0 and people will support him. The issue is that the story is extremely similar in China as well.

We need to actually raise above doing dubious things ourselves to make sure that does not happen and we do not end up with another conflict.

Uther · 23 May 2021 at 18:27

Shocking incident but I doubt much will happen. Some regimes can seemingly do what the like and not care what anyone thinks.
Looks like he'll be disappearing for several years, poor sod.

Nasher · 23 May 2021 at 18:43

If the airline just said no, what are they going to do shoot it down and kill 100s of people?

Uther · 23 May 2021 at 18:45

Nasher said:
If the airline just said no, what are they going to do shoot it down and kill 100s of people?

Wouldn't put it past them tbh. I doubt an airline or pilot would want to risk it.

Enkore · 23 May 2021 at 18:56

Nasher said:
If the airline just said no, what are they going to do shoot it down and kill 100s of people?

Very unlikely. To think otherwise would be extremely far-fetched. Ryanair would be fined though since I think its a law to follow directions of ground control of the country airspace you are in

peterwalkley · 23 May 2021 at 19:03

Nasher said:
If the airline just said no, what are they going to do shoot it down and kill 100s of people?

Given what the pilots were told by ATC, the chances of them NOT obeying are slim to none at all. From the beeb:

In a statement, Ryanair said that the crew were "notified by Belarus (Air Traffic Control) of a potential security threat on board and were instructed to divert to the nearest airport, Minsk".

Enkore · 23 May 2021 at 19:07

peterwalkley said:
Given what the pilots were told by ATC, the chances of them NOT obeying are slim to none at all. From the beeb:

In a statement, Ryanair said that the crew were "notified by Belarus (Air Traffic Control) of a potential security threat on board and were instructed to divert to the nearest airport, Minsk".

Which made no sense because VNO (destination) was way closer than Minsk. The aircraft was something like 10 miles (I do not recall number but very very close) to the Lithuanian border.

Uther · 23 May 2021 at 19:09

Yep, apparently the Lithuanian airport was closer.
Remember when the American ship shot down that airliner? All they got was medals...

Enkore · 23 May 2021 at 19:15

Uther said:
Yep, apparently the Lithuanian airport was closer.
Remember when the American ship shot down that airliner? All they got was medals...

Yeah America is not Belarus or Russia. There is a lot of things that would turn any country into international terrorist/pariah - by just merely copying some 'mild' things US has done in recent history.

jsmoke · 23 May 2021 at 19:41

What's this journalist meant to have done, is he digging for dirt?

Enkore · 23 May 2021 at 19:49

jsmoke said:
What's this journalist meant to have done, is he digging for dirt?

I think he's the founder or a major person of a media telegram group NEXTA or something that coordinated/coordinates protests and unrest against gov in Belarus. Its basically a channel where they come up and coordinate actions against the government.

Iraklis F.C. · 23 May 2021 at 20:31

guess the russkies will reject all the rage from the west using the assange is still in prison argument. Bad day for air travel though.

Malevolence · 23 May 2021 at 20:41

...and Michael O'Leary asks the other passengers to pay a £50 surcharge for this free trip to Belarus.

Enkore · 23 May 2021 at 21:05

Iraklis F.C. said:
guess the russkies will reject all the rage from the west using the assange is still in prison argument. Bad day for air travel though.

Well the reality is that western liberal democratic world leads by example in these cases. We managed to hunt for Snowden, to the point of landing Bolivian president plane in search for him. We did a number on Assange. Then we decided to ignore and close eyes on blatant murder of Khashoggi.

Yet when a nasty dictator in Belarus decides to follow the example - world outcry. I mean its a kettle calling on a teapot.

I condone all of the above, I just wish we were actually better than those we sanction for their 'wrongs'.

Otherwise we are playing straight into these dictatorships internal propaganda

peterwalkley · 24 May 2021 at 07:51

The story has more information since yesterday: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-57224452 Belarus scrambled a fighter jet to "escort" the flight.

Rroff · 24 May 2021 at 08:10

Seems 6 people didn't get on the flight again - not known if all related to Protasevich - suspected at least 3 of them were linked to Russian intelligence.

Some wild conspiracy theories that he was setup to be turned over to the Russians by the US because they didn't like stuff he was up to. Don't know enough about the situation to have any idea if that is totally wild conspiracy or there might be something to it.

KompuKare · 24 May 2021 at 08:51

No that it's a competition, but the Snowden & Morales incident was in many ways worse.
As if, Snowden had been on Morales' plane, would all the US lapdog countries have done? As a head-of-state's transport enjoys diplomatic immunity so unless the CIA or similar wanted to go full-on rogue country there was little they could have done.
As for Belarus? Well I often hold them up as a joke example of what the post-Brexit UK could aspire to - if were to take the tabloid's nostalgia for the death penalty and hate for anything with the word Europe in it - as they are not even a member of the Council of Europe so while a lot former Soviet countries pay lip service to what being a Council of Europe member entails, Belarus don't even bother with lip service. Maybe it makes them a more brutally honest dictatorship, but I don't think that helps the Belarusians having to live under the reginme.

Terminal_Boy · 24 May 2021 at 09:28

Nasher said:
If the airline just said no, what are they going to do shoot it down and kill 100s of people?

That’s exactly what happened twice in the 1970s. One was a Libyan plane over Israel and the over was a Korean plane over Russia. Airliner was somewhere it shouldn’t have been. Fighter jets intercept, but are ignored by airliner. Fighter jets shoot down airliner.

There was a second Korean plane shot down by the Russian in 1983, but I don’t remember if the Russian plane attempted to communicate with the airliner before firing on it. Things were all a bit tense in 1983, closest we’ve come to WW3 since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1961.

Uther · 24 May 2021 at 09:32

Terminal_Boy said:
That’s exactly what happened twice in the 1970s. One was a Libyan plane over Israel and the over was a Korean plane over Russia. Airliner was somewhere it shouldn’t have been. Fighter jets intercept, but are ignored by airliner. Fighter jets shoot down airliner.

There was a second Korean plane shot down by the Russian in 1983, but I don’t remember if the Russian plane attempted to communicate with the airliner before firing on it. Things were all a bit tense in 1983, closest we’ve come to WW3 since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1961.

Don't forget the American ship shooting down the Iranian airliner a few years back.

Terminal_Boy · 24 May 2021 at 09:42

Uther said:
Don't forget the American ship shooting down the Iranian airliner a few years back.

The USS Vincennes incident? That was a case of target identification systems designed to look for incoming fighter aircraft deciding that an Airbus A300 was and Iranian fighter plane, rather than fighter jets intercepting a commercial airliner and deciding to shoot it down after visually confirming that it was a civilian aircraft.

Shouldn’t have happened though and what the US Navy was doing in Iranian waters at the time is stil hotly debated.