"Belarusian authorities scrambled a fighter jet and flagged what turned out to be a false bomb alert to force a Ryanair plane to land on Sunday and then detained an opposition-minded journalist who was on board, drawing condemnation from Europe and the United States.
In what was described by some EU leaders as a hijacking, the passenger plane flying from Athens to Lithuania was suddenly diverted to Minsk, the capital of Belarus, escorted there by a Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jet."
I don't think that describing this as a state-sanctioned hijacking of a foreign-flagged airliner is at all inaccurate, if some of what's being said is true.
insisting there’s an IED onboard. Eventually the crew was forced to send out SOS (literally moments before the plane would've left Belarus airspace). MiG-29 took off and escorted it to Minsk. Security services entered the plane and arrested Protasevich. (2/2)
— Tadeusz Giczan (@TadeuszGiczan) May 23, 2021
The flight originated in Greece and was bound for Lithuania, and was aboard a Polish-registered aircraft operated by a subsidiary of Ireland-based Ryanair. Understandably, rather a large number of nations and organizations are a bit cross with the Byelorussian government at the moment.
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