The forced landing in Minsk of the Raynair Athens-Vinius flight aimed at arresting the Belarusian dissident Roman Protasevich is on the table at the working dinner of the European heads of state and government in Brussels. Due to its gravity, the affair is obscuring many issues at the center of the summit’s work, starting with the issue of migrants raised by Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.
But above all it complicates the path of EU-Russia relations which seemed already defined also in the light of a less critical attitude of the USA towards the North Stream project. No substantial changes were expected apart from the confirmation of the European “5 principles” already established and the request to the Commission to prepare an overall report on the issue for the June Council. But the “hijacking” of the Raynair flight has fueled the concerns of the Baltic countries, which accuse Moscow of having supported Lukashenko’s liberticidal policies and are therefore calling for not only a decisive response against Minsk but an automatism to trigger sanctions also against Moscow.
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Minsk evokes unspecified threats from Hamas
In an attempt to ease the responsibilities of the Belarusian government, the director of the aviation department of the Belarusian ministry allegedly claimed that the forced landing was necessary after a Hamas threat against the Ryanair flight to Vilnius. But these are statements that are not taken very seriously. The Estonian Prime Minister, Kaja Kallas, on his arrival in Brussels, said that the incident in Belarus will be discussed and he hopes that strong sanctions will arrive, because “both Belarus and Russia have gone further and therefore a strong response is needed from of the EU “.
President Lithuania: it is state terrorism
According to the president of Lithuania, Gitanas Nauseda “the hijacking of Ryanair in Minsk is an unprecedented event, it is state terrorism against the European community. The time of rhetoric and vocal grievances is over, we must make ourselves heard by this dangerous regime with highly necessary sanctions to stop it. “France and Lithuania are calling for the banning of Belarusian airspace and Belgium wants Belavia to no longer be authorized to land in the EU. The president of the EU Commission Ursula von der Leyen has evoked new sanctions against Belarus.
Michel: it is an international scandal
And according to the President of the EU Council Charles Michel “what happened yesterday” in the skies of Belarus and Minsk, with the hijacking of a Ryanair flight bound for Vilnius, is an international scandal. We are working on sanctions, which are on the table of the European Council. The lives of civilians, including Europeans, were endangered. It is a threat to civil aviation safety. We are convinced that there must be a firm reaction ”. And the EU Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni says he is convinced that “the summit of the heads of state belongs to the EU government” also serves to give an answer to what happened with the hijacking of a Ryanair plane flying from Athens to Vilnius, forced to land in Minsk, where a journalist disliked by Aleksandr Lukashenko’s regime was arrested ”.