THE U.S. JUST SAW A DISPLAY OF AUTOCRATIC POWER IN EUROPE

 

                                       …Arrested Journalist Roman Protasevich

 

The President of Belarus is probably Donald Trump’s idea of a real president

An event happened this weekend that gives us an idea what a U.S. president, such as Donald Trump, would have done, should he have won in 2020.  Trump has acted as an authoritarian, so one could imagine that he would try such a move as occurred this last weekend.

In the only dictatorship in Europe, the autocratic nation of Belarus, its dictator and president, Alexander Lukashenko, ordered his airforce to force a Ryanair passenger jet to land in Minsk.  This was done just so that a opposition journalist, Roman Protasevich, could be arrested.

The Belarus leader had sent a MiG-29 fighter jet to escort the Ryanair flight down to the ground.  Protasevich, is the founder of an opposition media outlet that writes opposition articles about the Belarus leader who now faces at least 12 years in a Belarus prison.

The Ryanair plane was nearing Vilnius, Lithuania, before the Belarusian authorities made it turn around, and made it land in their capital, Minsk.

This was a power play that set a fearsome precedent for all journalists and political opponents, who now must fear flying through the airspace of any repressive regimes.  This is even if they are moving from one free capital to another, which was the case here.

E.U. leaders converged in Brussels and they are considering a European ban on flights from Belavia, the Belarusian national airline.  They are thinking of declaring Belarus’s airspace unsafe and other measures to strike back at the move.  This is according to diplomats and other officials involved in the discussions.

A ban on Belavia Airlines would be a blow to Belarus’s already shaky economy.

“We have faced state-sponsored air piracy, which many even call an act of terrorism,” Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics told Latvian Radio. “It is already a threat to international security and order.”

Fresh accounts of what happened were still surfacing, as Europeans reacted with outrage and disbelief that Lukashenko, could so easily snatch a plane out of the sky, flying between two seemingly safe European cities.

Belarusian authorities appear to have engineered a false bomb threat against the airplane, which was passing over their territory en route to Lithuania.  The Belarusian fighter jet forced the plane to turn back to Minsk, Belarusian authorities searched the plane for the falsely purported bomb.  They then arrested Protasevich, who's passengers told the Lithuanian news outlets was the obvious target of the effort.

“The plane was intercepted, and there was a warning given to the pilots and crew that there was a security risk on board.  Then the plane was escorted by the military jet to the Minsk airport, which was not the closest airport,” the Irish Foreign Minister, Simon Coveney told Ireland’s RTE radio on Monday.  “People came on board and then arrested this journalist who was involved in the opposition movement,” he said, calling it “aviation piracy.”

Minister Coveney said that only one or two people were actually arrested from the plane, but five or six people stayed on the ground in Belarus. “So that certainly would suggest that a number of other people who left the plane were foreign secret service,” he said. “We don’t know from what country, but clearly linked to the Belarusian regime.”

In a statement posted on the Belarusian Foreign Ministry’s website, spokesman Anatoly Glaz said that Belarus would “guarantee full transparency” and is open to receiving experts and presenting materials on what happened.

There is “no doubt that the actions of our competent authorities were also in full compliance with the established international rules,” he said, criticizing the “openly bellicose” statements from European leaders.

Yep,one could easily picture a President Trump doing something like this in dealing with those that have opposed his presidency.

Lukashenko has already waged a campaign of violence and repression against protests for months, following elections in August in which he went ahead and arrested most of his opponents.  According to Western observers, the Belarus leader falsified the election results to engineer a crushing victory against his lone remaining candidate.

Kind of a different version of what the former U.S. president is trying to lie about concerning the 2020 election.

The Belarus election sparked a wave of protests.  There was a violent wave of repression from the Belarusian authorities. Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the opposition candidate, fled into exile to Lithuania, and it was her visit to Athens last week that brought the journalist, Protasevich, to Greece from Vilnius, where he also lives in exile.

The European Union (EU) imposed sanctions following the election and the crackdown. But Sunday’s brazen actions, which European officials said they were certain had been ordered by Lukashenko.  This crossed a totally new line. There appeared to be little precedent for a nation-state to use its military to force down a commercial flight for political ends.

Lithuania’s prime minister called for closure of Belarusian airspace.  The Lithuanian Prime Minister, Ingrida Simonyte on May 24^th said the country would work with its partners to close the airspace of Belarus to international flights.

Ryanair CEO, Michael O’Leary called the situation a “state-sponsored hijacking,” and told Ireland’s Newstalk radio that Belarusian authorities had appeared intent on removing the journalist, Protasevich and his traveling companion, who Belarusian opposition media said was his girlfriend.

“We believe there were some KGB agents offloaded at the airport as well,” O’Leary said, without explaining how he knew that.  Belarus’s feared security service is still known by its old Soviet abbreviation: KGB, unlike Russia’s which is now the: FSB.

But despite the CEO’s concern, Ryanair continued to fly over Belarusian airspace on Monday, with a flight from Cyprus to Estonia.  They entered Belarusian territory even though several other airlines were rerouted away from the country.

Lukashenko has been Belarus’s heavy-handed ruler since 1994.  Protasevich became his enemy for helping to organize the protests against his widely doubted election win.

Analysts said the situation could drive the Belarusian leader closer to the Kremlin, with which he has long had an up-and-down relationship. The Kremlin has long pushed for the two countries to form a unified state.  That was something they agreed to in 1999, but they have not fully implemented, in part because Lukashenko has been dragging his feet.

Now the Belarus economy may be left without alternatives.  As Lukashenko has cracked down on all forms of opposition, including all media, he has been emboldened by Russia’s support. Although the EU has already sanctioned Lukashenko and other Belarusian officials, Minsk is highly dependent on Moscow, which issued a $1 billion loan to Belarus in December.

“I would assume that in this circumstance, Russia will help, and Lukashenko relies on Russia to help,” said Artyom Shraibman of Sense Analytics, which is a Minsk-based political consultancy. “He’s now a very anti-Western actor, and he thinks that these anti-Western actions must be rewarded or covered up by Moscow.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to meet with Lukashenko in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi this week.

A spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, said that “what’s shocking is that the West calls the incident in the airspace of Belarus ‘shocking.’” In a statement on Facebook, she listed other aviation incidents that she said drew a muted response.

The Kremlin has declined to comment.

Protasevich’s Nexta and Nexta Live channels on Telegram, a popular social media and messaging app, became a main source for news during the demonstrations as Belarusian authorities often moved to shutter Internet and mobile service. Telegram continued to work during the outages, and Nexta, then run by Protasevich, became a resource for where, when and how to protest. It went on to expose police brutality against protesters.

In November, Belarus placed Protasevich and Nexta’s founder, Stepan Putilo, on a terrorist watch list, charging him with three protest-related crimes. These are the crimes that could land him in prison for more than 12 years.  Protasevich and Putilo were the only Belarusian citizens on the list at the time.

Franak Viacorka, an adviser to the opposition candidate, Tikhanovskaya, said on Twitter that he and the former opposition candidate took the same Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius just a week earlier.

“We were lucky we got to Vilnius safely,” he said. “After [Sunday’s] incident, Belarusian airspace must be closed for international flights, and the perpetrators brought to justice.”

Of course, as expected, a number of Russian officials praised the move by the Belarus leader.  Lawmaker Vyacheslav Lysakov wrote on his Telegram account that it was a “brilliant special operation” by Belarus’s state security services.  Kremlin propagandist Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of the government-funded TV, Channel RT, formerly Russia Today, said on Twitter that Lukashenko “performed beautifully,” adding that she is envious of Belarus.

Yes, all those authoritarian supporters just love what the Belarus leader did, as is probably how our former president feels as well.

Copyright G. Ater 2021