Most of Belarus’s neighbours have reacted strongly to the regime of Alexander Lukashenko hijacking a flight last Sunday in order to arrest dissident journalist Roman Protasevich and his girlfriend Sofia Sapega. Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine have all closed their airspace to Belavia, the national carrier and banned their planes from Belarusian airspace.
Russia has publicly taken a rather different approach. President Vladimir Putin met with Lukashenko in the Black Sea city of Sochi on 28 May. Prior to the meeting, Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, defended Belarus’s hijacking as “absolutely reasonable”. State TV propagandists have praised Lukashenko, with RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan saying he “played it beautifully”. As European airlines have begun avoiding Belarusian airspace, Russia has denied entry to its own airspace to at least some planes whose flight routes now bypass Belarus, effectively extending sanctions on its neighbour to itself. Nor has the Kremlin publicly called for Belarus to release Sapenga, a Russian citizen.
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