This will likely have no consequences to the regime in Belarus, while increasing costs to these Baltic airlines.
A policy that might achieve something would be if the Baltic states, together with Poland and Ukraine, would close their airspace to Belavia planes, until the detained passenger is delivered to his destination in Vilnius.
This will increase costs to Belarusian airlines, which would be a problem to the regime.
Worth noting that the EU has banned entire nations (such as Kazakhstan and others) from flying in EU airspace before for not meeting safety expectations. It is absolutely within possibility to ban Belarus for an overt Chicago convention violation.
>It is absolutely within possibility to ban Belarus for an overt Chicago convention violation.
EU did the same thing in 2013 by forcing the Bolivian president's plane to land in an effort to catch Snowden. They have no moral or legal standing here whatsoever.
Those EU countries didn’t allow the plane into their airspace, encouraging it to land in a third country to refuel.
Belarus called in a fake bomb threat and used their fighter jets to force a passenger flight to land in their territory, not to mention the KGB officers on board making a scene.
Outcome might be similar, but it’s specifically the tactics used which make this unacceptable.
Morales plane was searched. If Snowden was on it, he would have been detained.
It's not that Belarus' actions are admissable. It's that the West is acting in a hypocritical way.
If Belarus had as much power as the US, they surely would have followed the same route and forced all the surrounding nations to close their airspace. The end result would be the same.
It was searched according to the local law where it landed. Nobody forced them to land in Austria - could have just as easily returned to Moscow.
The stark difference between the way the West does it is that you have a choice whenever to comply or pick an alternative, whereas Belarus left no choice.
EU, as a matter of routine, forbids certain persons from entering their airspace, has refused entry countless times to planes (some of them airborne) based on passenger manifests. Nobody would have batted an eye if Belarus would have done the same.
Pointing a gun (armed MiG fighter) at a civilian airplane based on who is a passenger using a deceptive pretext, outside laws and regulations, is several orders of magnitudes worse than lawful application of rules. If you fail to see why, read about habeas corpus.
The same end result achieved by legal or illegal means is more than enough difference. One is performed by the consent of many, the other by thuggery of few.
It a huge difference... You're suggesting there is a conspiracy a foot. When in practice it's quite likely France, Spain, etc. just denied access because then the diplomatic hot potato wouldn't be theirs :)
And I'm hindsight Austria probably regrets they didn't deny access too, because then the potato wouldn't have landed on their soil.
It's not very bold to say: "pass don't involve me", but it's not necessarily a conspiracy to intercept a plane. That would have to involve a lot of people, and would probably leak..
“whataboutism” is a thought-terminating cliche — it’s a directly analogous situation that shows that there are no principles or rule-based order, only power. you have the power to get away with doing this, or you don’t; lofty rhetoric is a propaganda measure
* It generally has no context. Yes, the West did something similar. It does not follow that the West will engage in the same type of systemic evil, that argument must be made on its own.
* Whataboutism often implies that naughty behavior is ok; that the hypocrisy of the West is justification for some further evil. One is at best making the argument that everyone is evil so just do it
* It consistently assumes the ignorance of particularly Americans - that if you just tell the dumb American that his government did something bad too, the scales will fall from their eyes, they will accept everything is evil and meaningless, and they will stop criticizing you
* the West is just plain better, on the historical record, at admitting and correcting hypocrisy. It’s a kind of meta-hypocrisy for these countries that never actually implement a liberal system to do such a great job of helping us improve ours, by pointing out flaws we’re secure enough to fix and they’re not.
Moreover, whataboutism does not prove that only power exists. Much the opposite: it proves that, at least in the West, moral norms can have force. Else why would Easterners bother with it?
No, it was not the same thing. That plane had all means to travel in another direction, including return to departure point (it had more than enough fuel for it). Also, whataboutism.
No. You don't underestand. Snowden = american criminal. America = our friend. This guy = belorussian criminal. Lukashenkon - until some months ago our friend, now - our enemy.
You can fly from Kazakhstan on an European carrier to Europe. Europe previously have also banned shoddy Soviet era airliners that are both incredibly loud, toxic and quite unsafe, which is the right thing to do.
I feel this is a fairly pedantic correction, though of course you're very correct nonetheless. My opinion is that banning all of a nations major airlines from operating in your airspace is functionally equivalent to banning that nation. Belarus is much like Kazakhstan in that the vast majority of routes from its airports are by its national airlines. Most of the routes to the EU are flown by Belavia (Belarus' national airline) https://www.flightconnections.com/flights-from-minsk-msq.
I sincerely hope that this statement finally gets backed up by some decisive action that can put real pressure on these dictators, but I don't get my hopes up.
I know that people can joke about the west in Russia but are people allowed to make jokes about their own government in Russia and in the associated eastern european states?
Is it like China yet? I'm guessing not as there's no visible list of banned words and phrases, but we don't see (in HN) much criticism of Russia, Belarus from there, just attacks on the hypocrisy of the West.
Do you see it headed towards China, where no internal criticism is allowed?
Criticism is allowed unless you have ambitions to work in government. Critique of the government has become actually quite common in the Russian stand up comedy scene. There are some exceptions, like you cannot show any public disrespect to the Head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov (you can google how people apologise to him).
Edit (forgot to mention): also, participating in anti-government protests often results in people losing their jobs or being expelled from the universities
Edit 2: also, there is an ongoing crisis with the independent media: the Russian government is trying to suffocate the independent news outlets by classifying them as foreign agents (which has pretty bad practical outcomes for the news outlet)
The question was if people (I assumed a regular folk, not journalists and opposition) are allowed to make jokes about the government, and I answered to that. Of course I know that Russia has no traces of democracy left and I am aware how Russia targets high-profile people, including journalists. You should be more reserved before telling people they don't know anything.
Allowed? People would do it anyway. Most Eastern European communist era jokes involved the beloved leader. Russian jokes about politicians and policies are even better.
> Do you see it headed towards China, where no internal criticism is allowed?
But if you’re a russian opposed to Putin you cant’t really answer that on a western-run online platform.. (unless you’re considered insignificant enough by the Russian government, so you can safely be ignored of course)
Not exactly... In the US, organizations use this form of self-censorship to prevent a potential backlash from the public, whereas in Russia, the bans are direct orders from the government and the employers simply don't have any choice.
Often, there is less practical difference than I’d hope for. Look at the credit card networks’ sanctions of things like allofmp3.com, for example.
If you enjoy audio fiction, or short stories you might enjoy “The Revolution, brought to you by Nike”. It was written by an ad industry insider, and touches on a lot of issues regarding corporate self-censorship. (It’s a few years old, and predates Nike’s recent political activism):
For example, there have been many documented cases in the past few years of people getting fired over supporting the BDS movement - or in a few cases, not actively supporting anti-BDS movements.
For the Chinese you can tell when they cannot even refer to, say or admit certain things: e.g. massacres. But they would say "we are not being censored"
For China and Russia, etc, it feels as if by mocking the hypocrisy of the West they are naively assuming that there's no such criticism from within the West.
> For the Chinese you can tell when they cannot even refer to, say or admit certain things: e.g. massacres. But they would say "we are not being censored"
It is exactly the same in Russia, you may not mention certain historical facts at all, e.g. Germany-USSR cooperation during 1939-1941
Well, this is fine example of so-called "lie", plain and simple. You may mention it, and often it is being mentioned by all kinds of media. Things that really are frowned upon are highly controversial topics like alleged mass raping by the Red Army in Germany during WW2 . Other than that, no holds are barred, and things are discussed freely; I'd say hot topics are more frequent in Russian media than in the US one ; but clearly hotness and level of controversy is different in two blocs
You can google my username, and get my social network accounts for the last 20 years, and a lot of details me and even my family, wikipedia article about my grandfather and his history in USSR, and so on. And then ask yourself if state propaganda would go to such trouble for a couple of comments. It's not doxing, I wouldn't use it if I wasn't completely okay with that.
I am very worried that the situation is headed towards China, or much worse.
And the main reason I am worried is that I can see no path towards a peaceful de-escalation. It is a foregone conclusion in the West that "Russia = bad" and any attempt to say anything counter to that narrative gets you labeled a pro-Kremlin troll. Let's see how deep in the grey this comments ends up for example.
Think Germany after WW1. Humiliated, defeated country. The people of such countries tend to follow leaders who promise to make them great again. When they do, they get further mockery and isolation. And I think it's been conclusively proven that this only breeds more radicalism.
But most will read this as "if you are not with us then you are against us" and turn up the intensity.
While criticism is legal, it does significantly increase your chances of falling out a window, if you're in a prominent position. Very careless, these Kremlin critics.
Interestingly, critics of repressive regimes exhibit _themed_ carelessness; those who were a bit too open in Apartheid South Africa fell down _stairs_, instead.
> I know that people can joke about the west in Russia but are people allowed to make jokes about their own government in Russia and in the associated eastern european states?
That's a tough question. For example, when I was active in TikTok (I grew tired of it pretty fast), I've made a lot of very critical videos that had a lot of views. In one of them, that got almost 100k views, I explicitly said that Putin and his gang are usurping power, and while the current Russian laws say that it's punishable up to 20 years in prison, I think that they deserve the death penalty. I did not get in any trouble for that. But many others from Russian Libertarian Party (which I'm a member of) have, even though they've said much less. May be they had a wider reach, or may be it's just random, I don't know. And I wouldn't be surprised if a couple of years later I'll get 5 years of prison for these TikToks.
thanks for your perspective! Is the chilling factor an issue there yet? It feels from your comments that it's not, that its a bit too random yet, or a bit too early?
> I know that people can joke about the west in Russia but are people allowed to make jokes about their own government in Russia and in the associated eastern european states? Is it like China yet?
Yes, plenty of people inside those countries do not like regime and openly discuss it on public internet websites. I don't know about China situation so I can't make a direct comparison. If you're very popular blogger and you'll make direct insults to Putin (or any other person with high position), you might be fined or even jailed, there are laws prohibiting insults against people, but those cases are very rare. And nobody hunts ordinary people.
> I'm guessing not as there's no visible list of banned words and phrases, but we don't see (in HN) much criticism of Russia, Belarus from there, just attacks on the hypocrisy of the West.
Huh? HN is pretty much against Russia, Belarus, etc. Those who try to defend usually are heavily downvoted and labeled as kremlin bots.
Anyway people usually are gathered with similar viewpoints. Any outsiders are expelled quickly. I know web forums, where most of people are holding pro-Russian viewpoint and I know web forums, where most of people are holding pro-West viewpoint. But I know no webforum with balanced opinion. I think that for US people Republicans vs Democrats might be a close analogy.
Belarus aside, which ones? Because I can't think of any.
Seriously, it's been over thirty years since the end of Cold War and people still think there are some eastern European states associated with Russia... Almost all of them are in the EU now with the notable exception of Ukraine which is in a state of de facto war with Russia. Even Lukashenko has a bitter-sweet relationship with Putin.
Of these, Georgians are as anti-Kremlin as one could be, they were at open war against Russia in 2008. Armenia is a pro-European democracy. Azerbaijan, probably the least democratic of these, doesn't long for Kremlin either. In general, all eastern-European countries were happy to become independent from Russia and there is no reason for them to choose Russia over the EU.
So one would never refer to them as "Russia and associated eastern european states" because, frankly speaking, Kremlin has no friends in Eastern Europe. (I specifically differentiate between Kremlin with its cold-blooded war crimes, and Russian people, who are normal nice folks and are a significant part of the total population of Eastern Europe.)
I've seen some consider Kazakhstan to be a part of Europe. I suspect the region stretches, depending on the speaker, far enough east to encompass the speaker's country, regardless of its location (but no further).
Kazahstan is in Central Asia probably because it's so big. Even their timezones are prefixed with Asia. The Caspian Sea and the Ural Mountains are the eastern limits of Europe, so everything on the Caspian's west bank is in Europe. Astrakhan is in Europe for instance.
There is this reaction in internet communities to demand a kind of reaction from a democratic organisation that would only be possible in an autocracy.
1. High-ranking official says they're "gravely/deeply/very concerned" within the first 24-48h.
2. Some EU parliament member mentions the problem within two or three weeks, shaming other members. A clip of this few minutes long speech gets shared all over social media.
3. Absolutely nothing happens until everyone forgets about the issue.
Over and over again, issue after issue, day after day.
Democracies can be capable of quick direct action too. See U.S. esp. U.S. some 50-70 years back. Democracy is no excuse for being inefficient, if democracies don't find a way to protect their values and interests, they will eventually be replaced by more efficient states
I was just explaining to my children that there was a time when the USA government employed censors (an actual job title) to control television content.
Much that the USA was or did 50-70 years ago was decidedly not democratic and not their proudest moment.
Ah yes, the glory days of "quick direct action" in Vietnam and Cambodia. What fun was had by everyone! What progress was achieved! We should totally long for that.
These are examples of unsuccessful wars, although we don't know how many times the possibility of American intervention prevented USSR from starting theirs. Korean war was partially successful though, the whole Korea could look like North Korea if US didn't intervene
I think the US has demonstrated enough "possibility of intervention" since 1991, wouldn't you agree...? Kuwait is "free" but Iraq is lost to Iran, Afghanistan and Rwanda are still a mess.
I would consider intervention in Yugoslavia pretty successful actually, instead of genocidal nationalist dictatorship we have a couple of democracies - not without their problems, but still no comparison to Milosevic regime.
Interventions in Iraq, Lybia and Syria can be seen as failures if we consider the bold goal to bring democracy to the Middle East. But at least these countries don't attack other countries any more - ISIS as evil as it is can't cause as much harm as these could.
In any case I guess with Eastern Europe it's more likely to work like it did in Yugoslavia than in Middle East. Belarus has really strong civil society, all they are missing is really some guns.
Yugoslavia was screwed up in the first place by foreign countries sponsoring separatists in Slovenia and Croatia. When that predictably turned out to be a terrible idea, “we” then decided to solve it with bombs, and while doing it we came pretty close to massive escalation with the Russians. We barely mopped up a mess of “our” own making, and it’s still a mess down South. “Successful” is not a word I would use.
Lybia is more of a mess than under Qaddafi, which means the issues with migration to Europe have worsened and the Lybians themselves are worse than they were. Same for Iraq. I won’t get into Syria since that wasn’t really a straight military intervention.
Yea, what Belarus really needs now is a good civil war, so that Putin can annex more territory on one side and we can create a new border that will be forever disputed. Or, as alternative, we can have them be the casus belli for thermonuclear war between NATO and Russia, that will work great.
Or you know, we can wait. Worst case scenario, Lukashenko sooner or later will die. Best case, enough of his security apparatus will decide he’s not worth propping up anymore. Either way, no guns required.
Good, so you're in favour of an EU army? Armed invasion of Bielorussia to kidnap the guy back?
The geopolitical armchair experts complain more about responses than actually giving realistic suggestions to give.
(Sure, we can cut Belarus out, and see thousands of "Russian tourists" go for a holiday there right after - maybe that would be a good response?). And yes, you won't see me defending Borrell.
Friendly note: people from the country of Belarus call themselves "Belarusians" (pronounced like "bela-roo-sians", not like "bela-russians"), and take offence at the term "Bielorussia".
That's interesting! From my (admittedly very weak) understanding of Cyrillic, I'd expect Беларусь to be pronounced with a "y" sound as part of the "e", similarly to the vowel at the start of Ельцин (Yeltsin).
Presumably that's because of a lack of orthographic knowledge on my part... or is it something more subtle (say, the belorusian language differing from Russian)? I have a vague memory of languages in the former Yugoslavia being either "ekavsky" or "ijekavsky".
Noted and fixed, as the other commenter noted it was the wrong language (and yes the romance languages call it something like Bielorussia, not much that can be done about that, sorry)
Yes, and all of them take time to be put into motion. A lot of different parties will have to agree, including immoral profit-driven scum like Ryanair. That's what democracy looks like in practice; it ain't as pretty and orderly as a tyrannical dictatorship, where one guy says something and everyone complies right away.
All of that means it's early to complain about any lack of European reaction. In some areas there has been a strong response already, and it will likely get stronger in the next few weeks.
Yes, but, remember mh-17 - the plane with 200 dutch citizens that russians blasted out of the sky in 2014? I'm sure strong response from the EU is coming in any minute now.
Well that's a most uncharitable characterisation of Ryanair. They are indeed profit-driven but they are unashamedly upfront and, frankly, honest about this. Their ruthless efficiency enables cheap flights across Europe, which was largely out of reach to previous generations. I'm not sure how they really differ from other successful profit-driven businesses, other than perhaps their marketing approach. You can choose not to fly with them of course, but many do, and wouldn't consider themselves immoral for doing so.
After this very incident, they continued flying over Belarus like nothing had happened. They couldn't sacrifice even a penny of profit, after one of their very own passengers had been kidnapped, to guarantee the safety of their customers. That was scummy, but absolutely in character for a business that doesn't even pretend to care about anything but their money. It took European law to make them provide the bare minimum of human comfort to their passengers.
I often have little alternative but to fly with Ryanair, as the airport in my hometown has been effectively taken over by them during a downturn. I honestly don't even experience much of the "cheapness" - for one reason or another, flying with my kids always ends up costing as much as on a regular airline. They currently owe me 600 quid for a flight I had booked pre-pandemic which obviously got cancelled - and they'd rather sit on a "voucher" for a decade rather than refund me, of course. I'm happy they changed the market a bit, but that was 30 years ago, now they're just a garden variety sociopathic business.
This is where professional politicians need to learn a lesson from the Great Orange One. If Buttigieg had just answered "No, I don't think our passenger planes are safe over Bellarus anymore, and I'm going to do whatever it takes to protect the safety of US citizens flying in Europe", that would have been fine.
Considering the recent revelations that Russia is literally blowing shit up in NATO countries (Bulgaria, Czechia) and EU and NATO's lack of response, this will most likely not result in any meaningful reaction either.
Golergka has been here longer than you and has a much larger online footprint than you do. The chances of you being a propaganda account are larger than theirs. Besides the obvious rule violation I think you should probably apologize. Flagging this comment.
You can't attack another user like that, and we ban accounts that do. Please read the site guidelines and stick to the rules from now on. Note this one:
"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."
I've posted endlessly for many years about how the overwhelming majority of such accusations are based on nothing but fantasy—poisonous fantasy, which it is not ok to pollute the threads with, no matter how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. No more of this please, regardless of political orientation or ideology or nation.
No, much smaller. I would agree that the EU's foreign policy is a disaster because of traditionally corrupted elites. The fact that the russian elites are even more corrupted is not an excuse.
„The Common Foreign and Security Policy […] deals only with a specific part of the EU's external relations, which domains include mainly Trade and Commercial Policy and other areas such as funding to third countries, etc”
This is a random result when you search for Borrell in Moscow. Look for his behavior in Turkey if you want some more examples of how random this guy is while he is considered an EU representative. His position requires for him to coordinate responses of the 27, but he is just wandering around wasting time and resources. As far as the EU is an economic powerhouse, letting dictators do whatever they want while allowed access to the market is making him irrelevant.
The HR post is a bit of an in-joke in European circles. It's being given to 2nd-rate European politicians who like to travel, and has zero effective power. The hard decisions are all taken among NATO members and are then ratified in the European Council.
Sadly this is one of the current issues of the EU project, nation-states flatly refuse to hand over anything related to defense. It's a great victory for the US.
Some EU member states (Hungary, Poland) are very much against handing over any diplomatic power to the High Representative. Hungarian government is basically acting as a Putin proxy here and Polish ruling party feeds on constant conflict.
I agree. At the same time Borrell has enough independence to make him a distinct face. He decides where he goals, what to say, how to behave when the EU is being mocked. Even if you say that he is just a glorified PR, he is an awful PR.
It looks that I'm picking on him, but he is just a very good example. I can talk a lot about others, but this thread is politicized enough already.
No, they're not a Putin proxy. What they're doing is literally pissing against the wind. A recent example: Hungary has bought vaccines from Russia and China which are not approved by the EMA. Now their recipients are basically not recognised as vaccinated and will face travel issues.
Yeah, the HR role has been systematically sabotaged since its inception, by way of appointing weaker and weaker nominees and starving it of any real power. At the moment it's a glorified PR position, with no decisional power whatsoever. Javier Solana effectively lost the battle for being the EU "foreign minister" and since then it's all been about individual member states.
Chances are this will not change until there is a serious rethinking of the European role in NATO. As long as the big decisions are taken there, there is no real role for an EU "ministry" beyond trade interests.
as it should be, the EU states act collectively at most trough NATO and the current decade EU so focused on being the political voice of its members is something being tacked on against the initial premise by which its members came together; the EU should always had been an economic union first to combat the tremendous advantage of the internal market that both USA and China enjoy and nothing more.
Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
Most of them do, but most will also waive it for flights originating or departing from said country.
Some countries go above and beyond; Russia typically grants overflight access to one airline per country, so SAS has the ability to fly over Russia while Norwegian Air never has.
MH17 being shot down meant a huge diversion of flights over a well trafficked route. It's not huge but the overflight fees add up after a while if people avoid crossing your borders, effective ATC in most countries rely on these aeronautical charges coming in every year.
While the effects might not be immediate and a stubborn government can shrug it off, there is certainly long-term consequences if airlines make a decision to declare a country off-limits for routes.
>This will likely have no consequences to the regime in Belarus
That's the problem with sanctions, at some point you run of of things to take away. From then on your target can pretty much do what ever they want, knowing that things can't really get any worse.
Expanding the sanctions to affect the entire country / citizenry has the side-effect of pushing populism there even closer to Russia, materially and emotionally, without having much effect on the actual bad actors beyond what the current sanctions do.
Traditionally a next step would be political, then material, support for an organized internal opposition, but there doesn't seem to be an obvious one in this case.
Economic sanctions can be aimed at Belarusian elites and state enterprises: ban on direct export to Belarus of luxury goods, advanced technology, ban on certain imports etc. At the same time freedom of movement with transit routes via Russia or Ukraine should be encouraged, to support low-volume trade and grey market. The bigger is shadow economy and the less concentrated is private sector, the more difficult is it for the regime to control it. It stimulates low level corruption and reduces loyalty of the law enforcement, increasing the chances of the opposition in the future.
> Economic sanctions can be aimed at Belarusian elites and state enterprises
Yes, this is already happening since last year, and was already scheduled to be expanded for a fourth time in June. I assume this clinches that, and probably more.
But the fact nobody seems to know there's been sanctions since last year suggests my other point - they're woefully ineffective as long as they can get other support.
Sanctions are almost always too weak. Any sanction that the government can withstand is too weak and will have the affect you describe. A strong sanction that says "release the prisoner immediately" will be short and not affect citizens long enough to create such a sentiment.
But it will be as e.g. an EU action, not a NATO action. (I have doubts they will get anyone on the west side of the Atlantic to sign on, but I hope I'm wrong.) And the EU has already been acting.
My point is: There's a lot of people in this thread demanding a vague "something" be done, but it's really not clear whether there is "something" between what the EU's plan has already been for months and a hot war, other than some ill-considered immediate panic.
Not so. Sanctions can be devastatingly effective applied by a significant majority of the world over a length of time. Sanctions were the instrument that brought an end to the Apartheid regime in South Africa: sanctions, having brought the South African economy to its knees, were a key factor in forcing the ruling regime to the negotiating table.
Yes, in some fairytale world the ruling National Party could have continued "doing whatever they want". Here in reality things would certainly have got worse, and the National Party government could see that the end-game was inescapable. Sanctions worked then, and they'll work again.
I know a little about this; it's pretty controversial, historically, whether Western sanctions, vs. decades of civil war and violent insurrection (often backed by subvert support from the Kremlin with the CIA playing defense) in SA and neighboring states were the catalyst. There are plenty of historians / economists who would argue that sanctions made things worse for the people of South Africa (much the same is said today about sanctions against Iran). In any event, that sanctions where "the" instrument that brought an end to apartheid should not be stated as if it were a universally accepted fact.
Let's ignore how ridiculous it is to give the West the credit for ending apartheid and that the economic growth of South Africa really doesn't back up your claim that sanctions were the key.
Even assuming you're right about the cause, the success story of sanctions would be a South African economy that never recovered leading to the suffering of millions. That's what happens when they "work."
What about Cuba? North Korea? Iran? They’ve been sanctioned for decades with devastating human consequences and little to no sign of those sanctions spurring any meaningful change.
I don't disagree with you but I do wonder whether for sanctions to be successful relies a lot on the way the population is feeling about the regime at the start. If they population decides to dig in, then the sanctions start to have a negative effect (in terms of getting a desired outcome).
If on the other hand the population is already angry at the regime, maybe it has the desired effect.
Only the US sanctioned Cuba and while it was pretty harmful, they were still able to trade with most other countries. North Korea has China right next door as a big trade partner, and can trade with many non-US countries as well. As for Iran, from what I can tell UN sanctions really only started to ramp up in the 2010s and those did have an effect in getting Iran to suspend its nuclear program.
Edit: But to be clear, I think the US sanctions on Cuba are gratuitous and cruel. Cuba is not some rogue state and there are many worse dictatorships that aren't sanctioned. However, I think it reinforces the point that "sanctions can be devastatingly effective applied by a significant majority of the world" because in the Cuba case the rest of the world didn't agree.
> Only the US sanctioned Cuba and while it was pretty harmful, they were still able to trade with most other countries.
There were considerable limits (particularly on foreign investment in Cuba) because parts of the US sanctions regime include retaliatory sanctions on entities making use of certain property in Cuba (some of these were suspended for a while, but restored under Trump in 2017.)
The impact of sanctions against apartheid SA get talked about a lot because it's a good example of international cooperation for non-violent activism.
Unfortunately talking only about sanctions ignores that plenty of governments resisted and watered down the sanctions because the apartheid regime's anti-communist ideology.
The negotiations to phase out apartheid for a democracy began mere months after the fall of the Berlin wall. At that point the collapse of the USSR was imminent, and the apartheid regime's utility as an anti-Communist outpost had expired.
What will increase the costs for the regime is putting sanctions on potash sales, which is the primary source of foreign currency there. Of course, Russia would just make up for it, but they had a hand in this as well, so attach a dollar value to this geopolitical hooliganism.
> they have already proved time and time again they are a dog which is all bark and no bite.
People keep saying that as if that was a kind of universally acknowledged wisdom.
Here is a map of the 39 countries targeted by European sanctions (not counting the ones specifically targeting ISIS territories or various regions of Ukraine): https://sanctionsmap.eu/#/main
There has been sanctions against Belarus for a while, suspended when they freed political prisoners, reinstated in light of the recent crackdown on elections. Here is the list of the 88 persons and 7 legal entities under EU sanctions (well technically, Council of Europe):
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...
Turkey doesn't have to "watch", they also received sanctions after the drilling standoff two years ago.
I'm an EU citizen we obviously have a different viewpoint on this but the link you sent to me shows precisely all bark in my opinion.
Holding off on a few weapons exports here and there is meaningless.
> People keep saying that
If it's the general concensus there may be some reason for that. I'm sure Belarus wouldnt try this with a US plane.
> Turkey doesn't have to "watch", they also received sanctions after the drilling standoff two years ago.
If the reaction to hijacking an EU plane flying from one EU nation to another is indeed just some export/import sanctions, then yes I do think Turkey will find that interesting.
Well, read the link again: the sanctions include a list of names, whose assets are frozen, who can't travel in EU and companies that have the same fate.
Economic sanctions are the most effective non-military actions states can take against each others.
Short of military invasion what do you suggest EU does?
In case you missed, yesterday a plane flying from Athens to Vilnius was intercepted by Belarusian fighter jet and a helicopter and landed in Minsk, to arrest an opposition journalist.
Edit: seems this is allowed by AV Herald under certain circumstances [1]:
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It’s odd to me that the Ryanair flight yesterday was already closer to its destination of Vilnius than Minsk when it turned around.
Ryanair said that the crew had been "notified by Belarus (Air Traffic Control) of a potential security threat on board and were instructed to divert to the nearest airport, Minsk".
So they didn’t have an incident onboard? There were no hijackers claiming to have a bomb? Just ATC telling them they have a bomb on board? And instead of landing at the nearest airport of Vilnius they turned to take a longer, more indirect route to a further away airport of Minsk?
This would seem obviously suspicious to me. If you have a bomb on board, wouldn’t you want to go to the nearest airport, not the one further away? Wouldn’t you ask why you are being redirected further away? Then wouldn’t the response when you point out you’re closer to Vilnius and for safety want to land there make it clear to you something fishy was up? I would love to hear the radio communications and any communications back to Ryanair operations on this one.
Ai have serious doubts that they would date shoot down the plane, but obviously this is such a wild scenario for a normal pilot that they cannot be blamed for not turning it into a game of chicken
Very interesting! Is there a sensible explanation for this? Have they known up-front that the flight is going to be diverted? Or maybe they were radio-ed before, and there was some discussion / negotiation (during which time, they aborted their descent to Vilnius)...
A plane slows down in descent to an airport, so my guess would be that they tried to leave Belarusian airspace as fast as possible, but it wasn't fast enough.
That would be the normal procedure, but there is not much to do when the aircraft is pursued and escorted by fighter planes. Any country has jurisdiction over their airspace, including shooting down any non-compliant aircraft.
This is a published rule of Belorussian airspace. If there is a terrorist threat onboard a plane in it the plane cannot leave the airspace and must land in Belarus.
I don’t know if this is a common rule or not. Maybe it was intentionaly established for situations like this?
Depends on the state and how much you're willing to pay.
Tier 3, extraction by mercenaries -- pay more for extra comfy helicopter. Tier 2, extraction by bribery. Tier 1, your captor will be overthrown in a coup backed by a foreign government. Not applicable if your captor is one of the following states: blah blah blah.
Aircraft don't fly in straight lines in Europe, though. A 100 (nautical) mile difference is more realistic. Still, a tiny detour compared to the Wizzair flight linked elsewhere.
we ended up in such situation because there are usually no consequences of governments doing bad to their citizens. UN is a joke. All sanctions are applied only against Russia, but for any other case/country what governments are usually doing are cheap words: "condemning/concerned/we are deeply ..." that's all.
There is no consensus inside UN on what is good and what is bad for people, countries have veto rights, which shouldn't exist if there were clear guidelines on what is allowed and what is not. Please show us some real actions and make authoritarian regimes feel pain for doing harm. Shutdown all the incoming and outgoing flights to/from Belarus, including transits and goods.
I just finished reading "Washington Bullets" [1]. (Part of) It is a crash course into how and why institutions like UN, IMF etc. are they way they are.
And honestly, I just feel paralyzed after reading the book. These institutions just don't have the clout by design.
> The United Nations is an international organization founded in 1945 after the Second World War by 51 countries committed to maintaining international peace and security, developing friendly relations among nations and promoting social progress, better living standards and human rights.
If UN is committed to do something good for having better living standards and human rights, then they must keep their promise and try to do something, otherwise just stop pretending being someone you are not and shutdown this organization.
I think we have passed the point in human history where local/national interests were above any other interests, now we should think about interests of humans. Be it Russian, Belarus, Palestinian, Israeli, Uighur, Armenian, black or white and so on, if human rights are violated, action should be taken and there must be a consequence for violating it, not only words thrown. US shouldn't have veto rights when rights of humans are violated, be it your best friend Israel or Saudi Arabia.
You can think what you want, but the reality is that the majority of the world still lives in poverty and ignorance, with all that it entails (and even the well-educated are not exactly guaranteed to have the same priorities as you, e.g. Israel). If you go around invading every human-right-violatin' piece of land, very soon you won't have an army.
The UN has its issues, like the League of Nations before that, but it's still a place where the world tries to communicate and (occasionally) solve (some) problems. It has lasted longer than the LoN precisely because it has not taken the "activist" bent of its predecessor. It cannot solve everything, maybe even anything, but it's still better to have such an assembly than not having it. If anything, it provides some legitimacy to humanitarian efforts, when enough countries in the Security Council agree on a deployment.
> If you go around invading every human-right-violatin
I am not saying invading, what I am saying is taking real actions by sanctioning all equally, not just sanctioning Russia because some EU countries or the US doesn't like it, but also sanction Saudi Arabia and Israel for violating human rights.
It’s impossible for the UN to both (a) grant membership to every broadly recognized independent country in the world and (b) consistently act in support of human rights.
UN is a forum where countries can talk to each other in a more or less moderated way. But I can see your point - UN is useless when it comes to dealing with dictators, stopping crimes against humanity while they happen, etc.
This affects me directly since i am working outside of Belarus now and rely on air travel to visit my family, still this feels like the only reasonable answer to KGB messing with airlines. I am expecting that most planes to Belarus, from EU are going to be cancelled and people will have to reroute their travel through Moscow.
In general it is terrifying how far my country went down the path of turning into another Turkmenistan\North Korea over the last 1 year+. Belarus was never a great example, of having fair courts ot great cops, but now it is just horrible. Half of my friends spent some time in jail, over the last year. Some were protesting actively, some wore clothing of "political colours" and were spotted by cops, some were arrested just because they were walking on the street and cops were in the mood to stir things up. Courts turned into a show where no matter how you were arrested or what was the basis for your arrest, you will get a fine and a few weeks (best case scenario - 15 days) in prison. Sadly, i feel that things are not going to get better anytime soon.
tldr: Donbass and Belarus. Fly around if you wanna live.
I'm in the same spot. When I was leaving the country after then-"election" in 2006, I had to wait until the engineer I was handing the project over to finished his 30-day prison sentence.
This year even my ever optimistic friends who were never intent to move have been sent packing. The hijacking makes things even worse for the unwillingly growing Belarusian diaspora, but there should not be mucking around. I advocate for the strongest pushback possible, even though anticipating a lacklustre response.
My close circle of friends, mostly moved to nearby countries Estonia, Ukraine, Poland and even Russia. One family has returned because they got homesick and being an immigrant is generally hard. But no one is planning to stay in Belarus, right now you can't be sure that tommorow you won't become a criminal without any guilt of your own and it is not getting any better.
And anything that hurts regime is worth it, no matter how anemic it might seem, in the long run it is all worth it.
Lukashenko will not go down without a fight, and Russia is very unwilling to see a color revolution again next to its borders. Putin dreams of annexing Belarus.
Couple this with the EU's overall weakness and fragmented interests (eg nordstream 2), and it's hard to imagine a good outcome.
A few sanctions will come out of this that will make EU officials look good and further place Belarus into Russian hands (namely, as you wrote, making Belarus airspace dependent on Russian airspace). Let's see what the real leader of the EU has to say.
If the EU can't stand for the people of Belarus, for the sake of freedom and human rights, then it will have once again failed.
It is not that clear that Russia all that happy about the incident. A girlfriend of Roman Protasevich, who is a Russian citizen, was also detained and that already caused PR issues for Kremlin.
Plus there is even comments from Russia’s Duma about how this can be damaging for Russia.
Protasevich was tracked in many countries before he entered this plane, tracked by someone doing that very professionally engaging a lot of resources. It is hard to imagine Belarus was doing this alone, without Russia support.
No one will stand for Belarus. Sanctions have the effect of running Belarus into Russian\Chinese debt pit even further.
Until the military sides with opposition (it won't) there will be no changes at all. Even if military gets involved, there will be russian "voluteers" (see Russian volunteers in Moldova 90, Balkans 92-01, Chechnya 93, Ukraine 14 ) that are there to help fight new "junta".
And then it will result in Ukraine II: electric boogaloo. Eastern Belarus is de-facto a part of Smolensk oblast' with some Russia funded murderers creating an "independent" republic. This was played out to death over the last 30 years.
And don't get me wrong. All while this will be happening, EU will be very concerned, that is for sure.
None of this will happen ofc, because all resistance will be suppressed with excessive force, at the very start. No trials, no judges.
>don't mess with Lucashenko and then you can fly over there just fine
the world is full of Lukashenko-s. We've all been critical of Saudis/MBS for example. What happens if your plane unexpectedly lands for some technical reason in Saudi Arabia and they check your internet postings? I'm pretty sure that that Internet criticism of MBS is a crime in SA. May be they wouldn't touch a US citizen, yet they would have no issues with a Russian, or any other shithole country, citizen like me.
I think that majority of HN readers, being from US and Europe, don't realise how many people from the shithole countries actually think like that and don't see anything wrong with this statement.
And yes, I'm using the Trump's derogatory words here. I was born and still live in such a shithole country, and I'm incredibly angry and at it and this shithole mentality that shapes reality around me.
A good policy, were the European Council agree on a half-decent response, would be to directly reimburse any airline for the extra costs of flying around Belarusian airspace. At that point even the Ryanair scum would probably agree to the detour.
That is not a map of US airspace, and I wonder very severely at your motivation for claiming that it is.
That is a map of responsibility for air traffic control/flight information services. The US has a responsibility to provide those services across a huge region of the Pacific; probably because they're the only large country with presence in that region. They charge for these services for aircraft which are not otherwise subject to US taxes.
The Atlantic is a little more interesting as it appears to cover the Bahamas; but one surmises that the majority of traffic in the region is nevertheless bound for the US East coast (note how it avoids Canada-Europe route sharply, and only protrudes into the Caribbean around PR).
Russia actually only allows one airline per country to overfly, generally[1]. So if Aer Lingus already has the concession, Ryanair can't even pay. Also, doesn't really solve this because Russia wouldn't have an issue doing exactly this either.
Please don't use the word batka to refer to Lukashenko. The word means father, and it was originally used to mock Belarusian for supposedly liking his approach to ruling the country. He's no father to any of us, and it's insulting to Belarusians to see someone referring to him this way.
Your comment is pertinent, so I won't change mine. Apologies.
In my country the word is frequently used to carry sarcasm towards the role that Lukashenko believes himself to have. In other words, it is meant as sarcasm towards the tyrant's ego, not the gullibility of the nation.
i think you are mistaken here. Bat'ka in this context is more like Bat'ka Mahno, ie. a leader outside of formal rules and leading more by personal power like a leader of a gang or a rebellion (or for example in Belarussian context - "Bat'ka Minay", a commander in WWII Belarussian guerilla resistance https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A8%D0%BC%D1%8B%D1%80%D1%91...).
> it was originally used to mock Belarusian for supposedly liking his approach to ruling the country.
not even close. It has always been used in the "leader" meaning described above.
>He's no father to any of us, and it's insulting to Belarusians to see someone referring to him this way.
as nobody uses it as "father" in this context it is hard to see your point.
The very sad thing is that there’s a lot of firms in Silicon Valley that do a lot of business with Belarus, totally ignoring the monstrosities of Lukashenko.
Mapbox for example, sources a considerable amount of its workforce from Minsk, and they’re little better than slaves because they can’t quit or complain or they’ll be sent to the mines.
We sit here and say that this kind of behavior is villainous, but we happily do business with those who profit off of the suffering of others. For shame.
> they can’t quit or complain or they’ll be sent to the mines
Working in IT in Belarus is highly coveted, highly cushy (often 4-day work-weeks, company retreats, WFH, etc), and pays 5x ~ 10x average salary (i.e. you become moderately rich, very fast).
If you don't like working for one IT company, you can switch to another one.
Some are US-standard crappy Wordpress mills or whatever, but if you're working in IT you're not oppressed and you're not lucky: you're a person with skills that are in-demand and you're getting well compensated for using them.
Are you sure? Any sources? That sounds like bs to me. While IT job market is shrinking, even if ppl quit there is still a large pool of jobs in pretty much any direction.
I can predict exactly what European countries will do in response to this horrible atrocity. They will express the deepest of all possible concerns. That's all they'll do. In fact that's all they can do. They simply don't have any other alternative.
What hasn't been mentioned at all is that Belavia/Minsk is a major corona restriction loophole. Last year they massively expanded their traffic to transport people via Minsk if more direct flights were not available. Obiviously money was more important than public safety . Lukashenka has stated that Wodka helps against Covid-19.
Whether that still holds this year I don't know. I have not studied flight schedules for a while.
If yes forbidding Belavia to land in EU countries might have an even bigger effect than usual.
Refusing service to a private flight carrying a politically sensitive person is very different from hijacking a scheduled civilian airliner by threatening to shoot it down if it doesn't cooperate.
The recent incident is painted in exactly the same light by Belarus authorities. They say that the plane was diverted due to a terrorist threat. All passengers were safely evacuated, and once the threat was cleared, they were allowed to continue their trip. During their time in Belarusian soil, one passenger was detained, for completely unrelated reasons. Of course Belarusian police could not do otherwise than detain him, for they were already looking for that person.
As is evident, the whole thing is a bullshit excuse to claim plausible deniability. Exactly the same as with the Bolivian plane. The only difference is which official discourse you chose to repeat.
There is an important difference. The Bolivian plane was warned sufficiently in advance and had enough fuel to flight back to Russia at that point. The Ryanair flight was forced to land with a military jet leaving the pilots no choice but to comply.
But I agree that what Western Europe did to Bolivian flight backfires now badly.
It's not like Morales told why he was being barred entry to four different countries' air spaces.
In both cases the pilot was lied to to capture a dissident and in neither case were the passengers in danger.
Lukashenko's propaganda will get a boost from this. Indeed, it's possibly what emboldened him to try it, safe in the knowledge that Europe and the US could only condemn it hypocritically.
The West loses moral authority when it pulls this shit - not only in their own countries but in dictatorships rhey are trying to sway.
Morales-Shmorales. No-one cares about the games governments play with their private jets. This was an unprecedented attack on public scheduled intra-European passenger service that every regular person may end up using.
This is a whole different category and that's why the whataboutism isn't working this time and the standard "losing moral authority" talking points sound particularly shallow and unconvicing.
Perhaps not to you. I think they'll make effective use of whataboutism on Belarussian state TV and newspapers. The similarities make it almost too easy for them.
I wouldn't call that particularly effective. Everyone but the most braindead vatniks know that's bullshit. Lies, lies and further lies just like in the USSR.
No amount of propaganda can mask how shitty the life is. There's no reason whatsoever why Belarus couldn't be enjoying the same quality of life as their direct neighbours in the west, they were at the same starting point in 1991 after all. Limited travel is still possible and people know very well what life is like just across the border. Do the same job, get paid several times as much, and without getting molested by government thugs.
RT is already mocking the very same press secretary who justified doing this to get Snowden in 2013 for getting outraged now as she unconvincing deflects a question about it.
CNN won't show that on your TV but I'll bet Belarussians will get to see it.
This is not going to play out unfavorably for Lukashenko, especially if the US/Europe hits them with sanctions that bite.
>There's no reason whatsoever why Belarus couldn't be enjoying the same quality of life as their direct neighbours in the west
Realistically Ukraine is a closer model for how they'd end up if they rejected Russia and aligned more closely with the West. They are under no illusions that a quick change of allegiance will turn them into Luxembourg.
I'm not defending the callous behavior of Belarus. I'm just pointing that the UE/NATO criticism of it is shamefully hypocritical. Both are equally wrong in my eyes.
> the "Somebody else got away with it!" line is not a valid defense for anything.
It actually is, if you are tacitly saying "and we will let them them get away with it again, and again, and again…" but "these other guys you must help me stop".
Countries that refuse access to their airspace will generally send fighter jets if you violate it.
The implicit threat of something going badly wrong if they did not land was still there.
And, in both cases it was a dissident committing acts of public service they were after. It was NOT a terrorist.
Even if you manage to convince yourself that the two actions were in no way equivalent that's not how it will play in Belarus. Lukashenko knows that downing Morales plane gives him extra moral authority among his people ("this is standard even the US does it") which is probably why he risked it.
And yet permission to fly over their airspace wasn't revoked while they were in their airspace. If they had wanted to do so, they could have. They did not. So I don't see the sense in constructing this strawman of "oh but it meant they could've scrambled fighters".
If Lukashenko had done the same thing France had done, the plane wouldn't have been allowed to enter Belarusian airspace. That's not what he did. What he did was far more egregious and far more dangerous and threatening.
shrug The net result was the same - a plane was grounded through deception so a dissident could be arrested. Nobody was hurt by either action.
I don't think Belarussians are going to split these hairs. I suspect also that pro western politicians on Belarussian TV will be goaded into defending what the US did to Morales. They are now placed in an extremely awkward position.
If we then hit the country with sanctions over this ordinary Belarussians are going to be bitter about the hypocrisy (of which they'll be made fully aware) and it will play directly into Lukashenko's hands.
This claim is repeated again and again; yet the circumstances and the actual event (there was no forcing down) were very different; see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27256946
How would the plane have gotten back to Russia from Austria, even if it did have enough fuel (according to the Wikipedia article, that was not clear to the crew)?
Why do you think Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, even Ukraine would not have similarly refused access if the crew had not landed in Austria of their own will?
A careful reading of the wikipedia page shows the truth. Whether you revoke airspace permits and force the plane down based on fuel reserves, or scramble fighter jets, the net effect is the same: the plane lands before when it was planning to, if it wants to do so in one piece.
Let’s not split hairs here when the precise same political motivation, and the precise same mechanism was used (the threat of fighters if the plane continues).
The fun part is that the whole ruse was an Assange trick, and without Snowden ever touching the aircraft, Assange got the US to tip their hand that they’re more than happy to engage in such shitty and underhanded techniques, even against a head of state.
> I'm only pointing out these two incidents aren't quite in the same category.
they are the same in motives and principles - in both cases a state pressure was applied to extract an undesirable to the regime citizen from a plane. Focusing on technicalities of the act doesn't resolve the issue with the nature of the act - the corrupt state acting as a bully to coerce its rightful citizen into submittance, with all available means. It shouldn't be a revelation that a scoundrel-of-a-state is ready to escalate the means to fighter jets sooner than later.
"in both cases a state pressure was applied to extract an undesirable to the regime citizen from a plane"
As I explained - in case of Snowden they would only have prevented him from getting to South America. They wouldn't have extracted him from the plane. If Snowden was on board, he'd simply be flown back to Russia - back to square one.
An analogy in this case would be Belarus merely prohibiting the RyanAir flight from entering their airspace.
> in case of Snowden they would only have prevented him from getting to South America.
And you know this how, were you working for the Austrian government at the time, and were you a member of the team who searched the plane?
Chances are that they would have at minimum detained him and allowed the US to start extradition proceedings. Whether they would have eventually extradited him, is not certain; but they would not have searched the plane (and sent the Austrian President to talk directly with Morales) if they were not minded to detain him.
You seem to have started writing your reply before (or instead of) reading my commment in full.
My point was that if Snowden actually was there, they wouldn't land in Austria to begin with. Unlike the RyanAir flight, the plane wasn't forcefully grounded (under a false pretense). It just wasn't let through any further, but returning was still an option.
Because of the constraints on fuel, there was no realistic alternative to going down. And again, once that happened, the fact the Austrian government sent a search party says it all, no matter how hard you want to spin it.
Look around in the various threads, this has been discussed and also in the past. The plane had barely enough range to make it back home with one refuelling stop on the way. NATO countries were closing airspace while it was in the air, even going back to Russia would have been a challenge having to fly back over the likes of Hungary - which by then could well have been closed too.
Look, ignoring moral standing, every countries have fugitives they want to capture. Talking about motive is meaningless. How that being carried out is important. Morales' entourage weren't in danger. They could have chosen to land in Vienna to send a message for all we know.
Belarus disregarded convention and put passengers in the harm way. Ryanair's flight didn't have a choice. Simple as that.
> Look, ignoring moral standing, every countries have fugitives they want to capture.
if you ignore moral standing, you ignore a code of values that, when applied to fugitives of all kinds, allows you to distinguish those on the good side from those on the bad side. Your effective position in that regard is that there are no principles by which people bear responsibility for their actions, which is a basis of the notion of fairness and the whole body of knowledge that we call justice. And if there's neither responsibility nor justice, there shouldn't be a concern about the incident in the first place, as everyone is in their own right to do whatever they want, including forcing a plane to land with a means of fighter jets.
Next, to the point of "Talking about motive is meaningless. How that being carried out is important". Observe that by this standard, in an alternative universe, a hitler would have been acquited if, instead of gas chambers and concentration camps, people were given "vitamins" that would silently kill them in their sleep at their homes.
It is possible to disagree with both actions; but it doesn't destroy "but you did it first" defense. The precedent[1] happened and was generally accepted, so unless you want to go the quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi route, it is supposed to be acceptable defense.
The principal way is to reject that defense for all cases, including the first one.
[1] And not just Morales' plane; this happened more often than that. Morales and Snowden were just high profile.
Yeah, the Snowden affaire should have been the impetus for a new convention on civil airspace. It would have been a good chance to also mop up some of the worst abuses post-9/11, and re-commit US and NATO to a respectful and democratic future. Sadly the chance was completely missed, even after the red rage for the leak had somewhat dissipated. And here we are.
I don't the think the thread was about defending Lukashenko's terrorist act, it was about reminding everyone that, shamefully, such acts are not limited to demented regimes like his.
We are all right to be outraged by what happened in Belarus. We should also be even more outraged when our own governments,which we nominally have some control over, do similar things.
If they were over Austria, are you sure the other countries on the way to Russia would have let them through? Or would they have suddenly also refused access over their air space?
We will never know of course, but the closeness of the situation is still alarming.
Evo Morales' plane? From what I gathered it wasn't forced down in Austria, it's just that they were refused entry into the airspaces of several countries and the pilots weren't sure about the remaining fuel levels.
Apparently the whole thing was a stunt by Julian Assange? Don't know how true that is
They could have also been refused access to the airspace of other countries sorrounding Austria if they had not chosen to land there. We don't know how the situation would have evolved.
And at "best", Assange could be the source of the (mis)information that Snowden may have been on board - the stunt itself was entirely pulled by the governments of France, Spain, Italy.
> that they were refused entry into the airspaces of several countries
Countries that minutes earlier they were cleared to fly through, and had planned to fly through. Had they ignored the refusal and proceeded as planned? Same ending: fighter jets.
Clearance to fly through and clearance to make an emergency landing due to doubts about the fuel gauge (we have the cockpit audio discussing the latter...) are not the same thing.
If there was really a dastardly plot to capture the guy that wasn't even on the aircraft, they'd have gone for fighter jets, not "don't land in our country, land in the country you're flying over where a diplomat will be mildly undiplomatic towards you [or fly back to Russia completely unmolested]"
One could argue that figher jets were not used at that time to keep the pretence of legitimacy of the entire episode. And that pretence is important, because when you publicly declare that the force is now the standard, the most unscrupulous bully wins over bullies with moral limits or political liabilities. Belarus, on the other hand, in its current political environment has no image to lose.
One could also argue fighter jets weren't used at the time because none of the states involved planned for Morales' pilot to identify an issue with his fuel gauge and request permission to land, which has the neat property of being consistent with the hard evidence as well as not involving the whole of Europe's ATC coming up with the clumsiest plot ever to detain someone who wasn't actually there, particularly significant to Europeans or any easier to arrest in Vienna than the originally scheduled stop in the Canary Islands
Very much NOT the same ending. Had this theoretical situation happened, and had fighter jets been scrambled, they would have escorted the plane out of their airspace. They would NOT have forced it to land and arrested any passengers.
That's just speculation. Chances are they would have actually grounded the plane instead, because nobody would want to risk the plane falling down because of lack of fuel while being escorted.
Let's be honest here: Putin and Lukashenko can get away with this sort of shit because "we" first showed that it's acceptable behaviour. This is the risk of breaking unwritten rules on the international stage: sooner or later a bad guy will do it too, and you won't have the moral high ground. This journalist, and all the others who will have to take airspace into consideration from now on, are paying for the sins of Obama.
You say "nobody would", but that is standard procedure when a plane enters an airspace it is not allowed into. I don't see why there would be an exception in this case, and you want to argue that, I think you will need to actually justify that.
All the Belarusian authorities need to do is to send the detained person on the next flight to Vilnius, as Ukrainian authorities have done, and this incident will be over, too.
Germany has general election this September and since Merkel is gone for good there is a huge possibility that the CDU (the majority party for several years now and was in favor of NordStream) will lose to green party. Green party is completely against NordStream2.
So things might actually change. But then again, it is easy to criticize when you are not in power.
Germany should really consider term limits for the bundestag and chancellor. Allowing a single politician to rule the country for an entire generation is absurd.
The limit is not set, however chancellor must be voted in every 46 to 48 months.
However your second point is not correct at all, Germany had made their beurocracy specifically in such a way after WW2 that one person cannot dictate/rule the country. Every decision must pass through appropreate ministries first. This is one of the reasons COVID vaccination rollout was so slow in the beginning but after all the "approvals" were met they are vaccinating ~1m people a day. Chancellor in Germany is not even close to power of President in US, for example.
Thank you for the clarification -- but Merkel has been in power for over 15 years. I don't care how many interested parties and fellow bureaucrats keep re-electing her, or that her position is less-than-queen. For the rest of the world, she's the face of Germany. Time for a new one -- like maybe after 5 years at the helm.
My feeling as someone looking from outside, is that Merkel was forced to continue and buy gas from Russia because of the public outcry against nuclear power following the Fukushima disaster. The Green party might not be so eager to support nuclear, either. So then, without nuclear, without gas, there isn't a lot of choice for Germany in terms of energy.
Merkel has done plenty of things without major public support. She could have declared "wir schaffen es mit Atomkraft" and the country would likely have accepted that.
The central government doesn't even want that pipe all that badly anymore, it's mostly the clowns governing the federal state of Mecklenburg-Prepommerania who want to continue.
As much as I despise the Russian regime, the American sabotage of that project aren't much better. Power to Germany if they decide to choose which party they hand control to. At least this way the American influences are limited because of competition in the energy space. With the US desperately clinging to remain their control over the European energy market, Russia's attempts to take their place and Germany's nonsensical denouncement of nuclear energy, the entire project is a cesspool of power struggles and corruption.
I don't find Russian involvement very believable. Belarus don't need Russia to force a plane to land, they can do their own state-funded terrorism like any dictatorship.
Germany insistence on closing nuclear power plants is doing Europe a lot of harm. It opens up one of the great powers of Europe to be controlled by Russia.
That's akin to approving products made using forced labour because they are cheaper.
I think international community needs to shut down this little German-Russia thing going on. If we can learn anything from the history, such alliance never ended well for the rest of Europe.
On 21st of October 2016 Ukraine did the same to Belavia flight, including fighter jet etc. I haven't heard of any international uproar or calls to ban Ukrainian air companies / avoid airspace.
A policy that might achieve something would be if the Baltic states, together with Poland and Ukraine, would close their airspace to Belavia planes, until the detained passenger is delivered to his destination in Vilnius.
This will increase costs to Belarusian airlines, which would be a problem to the regime.