A Ryanair plane on a regular Athens-Vilnius flight was forced to land in Minsk. It carried Roman Protasevich, a journalist and one of the co-founders of NEXTA online platform. As the plane was flying over Belarus, somebody on the plane supposedly claimed that there was a bomb on board and demanded to land the plane in Minsk. Protasevich posted that in Athens prior to boarding he was tailed by some sketchy character who was trying to photograph his travel documents. It is unclear, but the same sketchy character may have boarded the plane and called in the bomb threat — there was reportedly a conflict between the flight crew and “a passenger.” Of course there was no bomb (photo shows bomb sniffer dog sniffing the luggage), but after the plane was intercepted by a MIG-29 fighter jet and forced to land, the passengers were taken off the plane, and Protasevich led away by security forces. To further exacerbate things, Protasevich is under threat of a long prison term (if not worse) in Belarus.
This is state-run air piracy, plain and simple.
The narrative above is my summary of several recent posts from https://t.me/s/nexta_live
For another summary, refer to Meduza — the main independent Russian-language news source:
meduza.io/…
BBC is also covering the events, but their reporting is hours behind NEXTA and Meduza:
www.bbc.com/…
Now, to provide a bit more context. There was a presidential election in Belarus in August last year, Lukashenko declared himself the winner (quite implausibly), which led to mass protests that were brutally suppressed. After the counter-revolution, the likely president-elect, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, was forced to leave the country. Several leaders of the anti-Lukashenko opposition, including Tsikhanouskaya’s husband Sergei (Sviatlana ran for president after his arrest), are imprisoned, many without even a fake trial. Another leader, Vitold Ashurak, just died in detention under… I was going to say “seriously suspicious circumstances,” but let’s call a spade a spade — they killed him. There was a new round of repression against the media with even a shred of independence in reporting, and now — this plane.
novayagazeta.ru/...
Sunday, May 23, 2021 · 7:37:44 PM +00:00 · kalmoth
Tsikhanouskaya spoke on CNN, it was a short interview, she was impassioned yet concise. The plane was released after seven hours — without Protasevich, his girlfriend, and several other people, possibly members of Belarusian or Russian secret services. There will be no further updates to this diary.