It has been called an act of state-sponsored air piracy, a hijacking, and a kidnapping. It has led European leaders to order EU-based airlines to stop flying over Belarusian airspace and to ban Belarusian carriers from flying over EU airspace or using its airports. It has isolated Belarus like never before. And it will almost certainly spark a new round of US and EU sanctions against the country.
But serious questions remain about whether the authoritarian regime of Alyaksandr Lukashenka acted alone in forcing Ryanair Flight 4978 to land in Minsk, where Belarusian authorities arrested dissident journalist Raman Pratasevich, who was living in exile in Lithuania, and his Russian girlfriend Sofia Sapega. More specifically, did Lukashenka get a stealthy assist from Vladimir Putin’s Russia in hijacking a commercial airliner travelling between two European Union countries? Was the Putin-Lukashenka axis of autocrats acting in concert in this brazen act of air piracy? And if so, what are the implications for Western policy?