Comment on Ryan Air & Belarus by Mark Birkett

DEAR ALL,

Frightening as it might have been, I think the Captain and First Officer should have refused point-blank to co-operate with the Belarus Airport police when they started offloading this innocent passenger. By the time they landed, the Ryanair crew knew that this bomb threat was a hoax. They also knew by then that Mr Protasevich was the intended target of this criminal hijacking. Therefore the flight crew had an absolute moral and legal duty of care here. At the absolute least, they should not have taken off again without him safely back onboard. Had the Ryanair crew refused to co-operate, this would have forced Lukashenko to back down. Not even he would have had the temerity to jail an entire international airline crew.

There is precedent for such a brave but necessary flight crew response. Back in 1986, there was an attempted hijack of a Pan Am 747 on the ground in Karachi. And it failed because the flight crew all realised what was happening and bailed out of the aircraft's emergency hatch in order to stop the hijack from going airborne. Ryanair's crew should have done the same. The Captain has an absolute responsibility to look after the safety of all his / her passengers - and from start to finish of the planned journey.

If this Lukashenko bastard can get away with this outrage, NO-ONE is safe. The Saudi regime have done similar when they killed the Washington Post journalist Jamal Kashoggi. The Rwandan government did the same when they abducted Paul Rusesabagina (of 'Hotel Rwanda' fame) and flew him to Kigali. And Putin got away with poisoning several people on British soil.

It's not often I'd venerate Margaret Thatcher. But I tell you this, she would not have put up with this sort of behaviour from a criminal gang without a significant military response. We have to learn to stop these bullies in language they understand. Closing their western bank accounts for half an hour - which is all our useless governments ever seem to threaten these days - is absolutely worthless.

Mark Birkett

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Belarus plane: 'Perfect storm' prompts EU to act fast

by Nick Beake</i>

BBC Brussels correspondent

Published

2 days ago

"Had they not acted now," one senior diplomat told me, "an EU foreign policy as an instrument to project geopolitical power was pretty much buried."

The agreement reached on Belarus by the 27 European leaders last night was unusually swift, leading senior Brussels officials to claim they'd taken tough action in the face of a wholly unacceptable act.

Demanding the immediate release of dissident journalist Roman Protasevich, they agreed Belarusian airlines should be banned from European skies and that EU airlines should not fly over Belarus, with a plan for further, targeted economic sanctions.

"This was a unanimous judgement," declared European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at an early hours press conference.

"It was an attack on democracy, freedom of expression and European sovereignty and needed a strong answer."

But, the same diplomat suggested, the crisis that Minsk had precipitated represented a "perfect storm": the circumstances were such that the EU would have been hard pushed not to secure some sort of agreement.

First, the shock that the lives of passengers travelling between two EU capitals were put at risk.

Second, the reason for their imperilment seemingly being the desire to detain a dissident journalist.

Third, EU officials were already at an advanced stage of tightening existing sanctions on the Lukashenko regime.

What happens with a military jet interception?

Some wondered whether Hungary may resist further measures against Belarus. Prime Minister Viktor Orban has continued to lend his support to the 27-year rule of Alexander Lukashenko amid allegations of vote-rigging and brutal suppression of dissenters. But it seems Mr Orban was not willing to pick a fight last night.

What difference will sanctions make?

At this point, it's hard to tell what impact the strengthened sanctions will have. EU officials are now assessing which of the individuals, companies (and therefore sectors) that have propped up the Belarusian government will find themselves targeted.

The leaders may have agreed on the principle of stronger economic sanctions, but there has been division within the bloc on the details.

Germany, Italy and France, countries with considerable commercial ties to Minsk, have reportedly been reluctant in the past weeks to embark on a path that may jeopardise their own legitimate economic interests. German media report that around 350 companies could be affected by harsher measures, including giants such as Siemens and Bosch.

In the coming days, this could become a renewed and heightened source of disagreement between the capitals.

What more can the EU do?

As had been widely trailed, the response to what has been described as "state-sponsored hijacking" and "airline piracy" focused, in part, on the aviation sector.

Here, the EU was not first out of the blocks - the UK and Ukraine had already announced a ban for Belarusian planes and called for a boycott of Belarusian airspace. But this collective action will serve to further isolate Belarus - and significantly its people, which will be of concern.

Why EU is often slow to act

To the EU's critics, foreign policy has long been the bloc's Achilles' heel: a supranational approach that all too often misses the mark. Two recent events symbolise the difficulties the bloc faces in both policy and practical terms in acting with a coherent, unified voice.

First, there was the uncomfortable visit to Moscow of Josep Borrell, the foreign policy chief, in February when he failed to defend Europe's leaders from accusations of lying.

In Ankara in April, there was the sight of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen being a denied a seat, apparently because she was a woman, while European Council President Charles Michel got the VIP treatment.

After these sleights from Putin's Russia and Erdogan's Turkey, another "strongman" in the form of Lukashenko's Belarus has stepped forward this week to present a test in the sphere of foreign policy. Brussels feels its risen to the challenge.

But if there was any hope the converging European consensus would have an immediate impact on Mr Lukashenko, it was short-lived.

As the tougher measures were being agreed upon behind closed doors at the EU summit, the leader was himself approving stricter measures - banning the live streaming of protests his government has not authorised.

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