Indeed, so the idea was to keep him in power for that not to happen. Genius!
Yes, but Belarussians want him to leave after he rigged the elections.
I have just read an article about Polish far right nationalists` defence of Lukashenka - they even held a demo in Warsaw. They praise Lukashenka for his stronghand rule over the country and dream about similar solutions in Poland. One guy came with the Russian flag. Nice.
Fekking renegades.
pl.sputniknews.com/pisza-dla-nas/2020082712973471-polscy-narodowcy-za-lukaszenka/
As there is not guarantee whomever comes next won't take course on Russia.
That will probably happen. Then Belarus is finished and people will become true slaves of Russian oligarchs who will take over Belarussians companies for free.
Poles must be prepared to welcome and host huge immigration from Belarus. Even refugees.
"I have just read an article about Polish far right nationalists` defence of Lukashenka - they even held a demo in Warsaw. "
Sure they demonstrate. Poland has its own specific interests and one of those interests is to have its place within the Slavic world. Now, with an increased level of global madness, the Slavic world is more and more popular. Far from it to be perfect but in the Slavic world, MAMA is still MAMA and TATA is still TATA, while speaking in general, Slavic culture does tend to provide enough tolerance for different.
i.ibb.co/YRjs9Fp/010-E2-EA9-8-FDE-4-A07-9-D49-174-AD5-FA7-A5-F.jpg
Respect from Serbia brate
Cops don't threaten to blow up such a bus though
Airspace has been neglected in international law.... on the one hand the air above physical countries has traditionally 'belonged' to the countries beneath them. On the other hand, passengers aren't 'in' the country in any real way as they are not subject to border controls.
Putin and his barking little lap dog Lukashenka have blown up the system and some new protocol on jurisdiction will need to be worked out.
The EU won't be able to do anything because it's led by incompetents and Germany wants ns2 too much.
Biden (like other democrat presidents) projects weakness abroad leading tinpot little dictators to try their luck.
In October 2016, a Belavia airline plane flying from Kiev to Minsk was returned to Kiev's Zhulyany airport because of a well-known "anti-Maidan" activist Armen Martirosyan that was on board.
The Boeing, carrying 136 passengers and six crew members, was forced to return to the airport of departure having received an instruction from Kiev about immediate return 50 kilometers before entering the airspace of Belarus without giving any reasons. The captain was told that in case of non-compliance with the instruction, fighters would be in the air. The pilot carried out the controller's order, and the plane landed at Zhulyany.
But "this is different", isn't it?
"Landing."
by Dmitry Petrovsky
A passenger plane rises into the air. It is about to reach its destination airport when a dispatcher calls for it to land. Fighter jets take to the skies. As the plane lands, the special services detain one of the passengers. While others are swearing, calling home ("honey, the plane has landed, who knows how long we'll be stuck here") and demanding compensation, the passenger is taken straight to interrogation.
This is 2016, the passenger's name is Armen Martirosyan. The plane belonged to the Belavia company and landed in Kiev. Martirosyan was suspected of having ties with Russia and organizing unrest in Ukraine at the behest of the Kremlin. The scandalous episode did not end well: the passenger was released after a few hours, and the then Ukrainian President Poroshenko apologized to the permanent leader of Belarus.
But a niggle remained. Now the official Minsk says that it is a chain of coincidences. They say that the air traffic controller received a bomb threat, passed it on to the plane, the pilots landed at the nearest airport, and Roman was among the passengers by coincidence. Well, maybe... Who knows, maybe there was a message, and who sent it is also unclear, there are many people interested in the scandal. Or maybe then, in 2016, Alexander Grigoryevich (Lukashenko) tied a knot in his memory and remembered this combination for the future.
Now, when Roman Protasevich, who is considered a terrorist in his homeland, returned to Minsk in a similar way, the Internet community is divided into two camps. Some believe that this was an unprecedented violation of international law, a seizure and terrorist attack, and call to immediately raise all possible anathemas against the Belarusian president. Others congratulate the Belarusian KGB for the brilliant operation, which has no analogues.
I cannot adhere to either of them, despite my desire. If it is an operation, there is nothing unique about it. The first case I know of was in 2004, when a private plane carrying a Russian citizen, Council of Federation member and former Deputy Minister Andrey Vavilov, was forcibly grounded in the U.S. He, like Protasevich, was taken for interrogation right from the airport.
In 2012, Turkey boarded a Moscow-Damascus flight. In 2017, the British escorted the Ryanair flight from Kaunas, but they did not detain anyone and did not find anything on board (it seems), although they searched everyone. Finally, in 2013, Bolivian President Evo Morales was grounded in Austria. Only because it was believed that Edward Snowden was flying with him.
This case is important for us not because the "civilized world" rightfully humiliated the head of a sovereign state. What matters is who they were looking for on that plane. Snowden, whom even some Americans consider a fighter for freedom of speech who revealed important secrets to the world. Snowden, who, if he had been born later, and not in America, but somewhere in the CIS, would most likely have started an anonymous Telegram channel and would have leaked all his findings there. But to the U.S. authorities, Snowden is a terrorist and a traitor.
Whether Lukashenko is right or wrong, whether he is taking revenge or playing another chess game, whether the Belarusian special services or, say, the European ones invented the mysterious letter about the bombing in order to leak Protasiewicz and to draw the Belarusian protest out of the American sphere of influence or back into their own, we will never know.
Obviously, there is nothing new going on, and the players' actions are prompted by the logic of the surrounding world, in which "everything is relative" and in which we have all existed for decades.
When the U.S. forces a plane to land, it is "democracy" and "good with fists" for some and lawlessness for others. The Ukrainian army shooting up the Donbass is "warriors of light" to one side and war criminals to the other. This list also includes Crimea and the bombing of Yugoslavia, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and much, much, much more.
All the curses, all the sanctions that are about to fall on the "last dictator" will not be for the unexpected landing of a Ryanair flight, and not even for Protasiewicz. They will be for the fact that he dared to play a game that before was only allowed to be played by big boys or (like with Ukraine) with the permission of big boys. And Lukashenko will be blamed for simply being on the wrong side of the barricades.
