Europeans threaten to limit Belarus air traffic after ‘state piracy’

European leaders threatened to limit international air traffic over Belarus and possibly target its ground transport as well, after a Ryanair plane was forced to land in an incident denounced by Western countries as “state piracy”.

Western leaders reached for the strongest language to condemn Sunday’s incident, in which a Belarusian warplane intercepted a flight between Greece and Lithuania and forced it down in Minsk, where a dissident journalist was arrested.

Countries called for the release of 26-year-old Roman Protasevich, whose social media feed from exile has been one of the last remaining independent outlets for news about the country since a mass crackdown on dissent last year.

“This was effectively aviation piracy, state sponsored,” said Ireland’s Foreign Minister Simon Coveney, using language that was echoed by a number of other countries. Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde said: “It is dangerous, reckless, and naturally the EU is going to act.”

The French presidency said a request had been sent to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to suspend international overflights over Belarusian air space. Banning the Belarusian state carrier Belavia from European airport was also being discussed, as were ground transport links.

Still, the options for Western retaliation appear limited. The Montreal-based ICAO has no regulatory power, and the EU has no authority over flights taking off and landing in Belarus or flying over its air space, apart from direct flights that originate or land in Europe. Belarus has shrugged off previous rounds of EU and U.S. financial sanctions.

Ahead of a scheduled meeting of the 27 EU national leaders in Brussels, Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte said she would push with partners to close the airspace of Belarus to international flights. She did not explain how this would be achieved.

Belarus says it was acting in response to a bomb threat on the flight, although this turned out to be false. It said on Monday its ground controllers had given guidance to the flight but had not ordered it to land.

State media said the decision to intervene had been ordered personally by President Alexander Lukashenko.

Russia accused the West of hypocrisy, noting that in 2013 a flight from Moscow carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales had been diverted to Austria after reports fugitive U.S. intelligence leaker Edward Snowden might be on board.

The EU and the United States already imposed several rounds of financial sanctions against Minsk last year, which had no effect on the behaviour of long-serving leader Lukashenko, a close Russian ally who withstood mass demonstrations against his rule after a disputed election.

The head of the foreign affairs committee in the British parliament, Tom Tugendhat, noting that the flight was between two members of both EU and the NATO military alliance, said: “If it’s not an act of war, it’s certainly a warlike act.”

AIRLINE HALTS FLIGHTS OVER BELARUS

Belarus lies on the flight path of some important north-south routes in Europe as well as east-west routes between Europe and Asia.