Although the unscrupulous secret service action to capture the Belarusian regime opponent Roman Protasevich was only a year ago, the case has almost fallen into oblivion. However, the legend of an intercept maneuver by the Luftwaffe persists.
A Boeing 737-800 had to make an emergency landing in Minsk a year ago. Pictured is an aircraft of the same model operated by Norwegian Air Sweden on January 17, 2020 in Riga.
A year ago, the emergency landing of a Ryanair Boeing 737-800 in Belarus caused worldwide outrage. The machine was on its way from Athens to Vilnius when the crew received information from Belarusian air traffic control that there was a bomb on board. However, this warning was just a ploy by the Lukashenko regime to divert the plane to Minsk and take control of it there.
This had devastating consequences for two passengers: The journalist Roman Protasevich, who was critical of the regime, and his girlfriend Sofia Sapega were taken prisoner. Everything indicates that the fake bomb threat was part of an elaborate intelligence operation to silence the exiled Protasevich.
Absurd “terrorism” allegations
In response, the EU, the USA and other countries imposed harsh sanctions; To this day, Belarusian aircraft, for example, are no longer allowed to use European airspace. But after a year, the case seems to have disappeared from public awareness. The much more dramatic events that followed, including Lukashenko’s artificially created refugee crisis on the Belarusian-Polish border in the fall, the transfer of tens of thousands of Russian soldiers to Belarus and finally Russia’s attack on Ukraine, covered up the Protazevich affair. The injustice that the regime critic is being held for absurd “terrorism” allegations and that his girlfriend was recently sentenced to six years in prison is in danger of being forgotten.
Even though the operation against Protasevich exposed the lying nature of the Lukashenko regime, the Belarusian dictator was right on one point. Reporting in Western media has not always been factual enough. The events were described in many places as “aircraft hijacking” and “act of air piracy”. The basis for such assessments was the rumor that a Belorussian MiG-29 fighter jet had intercepted Ryanair-Boeing and forced it to land. Reports about the role played by this MiG-29 can still be found on the websites of major western media houses BBC, CNN or the “New York Times” to find.
However, there was never an interception maneuver. Like the one published in January without much repercussion investigation report the UN civil aviation organization ICAO, the flight captain’s decision to make an emergency landing was made without any coercion on the part of the Belarusian air force. It is true that on that day, at 1:04 p.m. local time, a MiG-29 actually took off from the Baranovichi military base. At this point, the Boeing was already approaching Minsk. The pilot had already initiated the emergency landing 17 minutes earlier. When the Ryanair plane touched down at Minsk Airport, the MiG-29 was still 55 kilometers away.
Didn’t know about a military jet
According to the investigation report, the passenger plane was neither intercepted nor escorted during the landing approach. According to the recordings of the radio messages, there was also no communication between the Ryanair cockpit and the Belarusian Air Force. The crew confirmed this. She didn’t know anything about the approach of a military jet until it landed.
This fact is important because it puts the Ryanair pilot’s decision in a different light. In the case of an interception maneuver, it is imperative to follow the landing request. “You don’t start a discussion with a MiG-29,” the agency quoted a year ago Reuters an expert. In reality, however, the scope was greater. The crew was only confronted with a “recommendation” to divert the flight to Minsk from Belarusian air traffic control.
This, too, is not to be taken lightly. But the flight captain himself obviously had doubts about the truthfulness of the bomb warning. He asked the Belarusians various skeptical questions and only decided to make an emergency landing after 16 minutes. Just two minutes longer and the Boeing would no longer have been in Belarusian airspace. Then Protasevich and Sapega would never have been arrested.