DISINFO: The West employs double standards in its treatment of the Ryanair flight incident in Belarus
SUMMARY
It is appalling that the West describes the incident in the airspace of Belarus as shocking. The life of civilised democracies, which in reality takes place according to the principle of quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi (what is permissible for Jupiter may not be permissible for a bull), has not been unique for a long time because these democracies have lost the true leadership qualities they once possessed, and caused the blood and suffering of millions around the world.
Either you express your shock at everything: from forcing the plane of the President of Bolivia to make an emergency landing in Austria at the request of the United States, and forcing a Belarusian plane to land in Ukraine 11 minutes after taking off with a Ukrainian opposition activist, or you do not.
RESPONSE
A recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about the interception of the Ryanair flight FR4987 claiming that it is standard practice. None of the examples cited in the claim involved tailing by fighter jets, the communication of false information or crackdowns on the political opposition.
On 23 May 2021, a Belarusian MiG-29 fighter jet belonging to the Belarusian Airforce armed with air-to-air missiles intercepted Ryanair flight FR4987 en route from Athens to Vilnius. The Minsk Air Control reported a bomb on board the aircraft and demanded the flight redirected to Minsk. As the plane landed, a dissident journalist wanted by the Belarusian authorities for “extremism” was detained.
While it is true that the plane of Bolivian president Evo Morales did land in Austria under US pressure thinking that US fugitive Edward Snowden was aboard, the situation is far from comparable to the Ryanair flight incident where military jets tailed the plane forcing it to land abruptly at Minsk Airport, and communicated false information about a bomb being on the plane, only to arrest a Belarusian opposition journalist upon landing. Morales was received in Vienna by Austrian chancellor Heinz Fischer, and many European countries, including France and Spain, issued an apology at the time.
Neither is the the case of the Armenian activist Armen Martirosyan, whose plane in 2016 was asked to return to the Ukrainian capital a short while after taking off from there, comparable to the Ryanair incident. After being removed from the plane, Martirosyan, who was flying from Kyiv to Minsk, was allowed to depart again on the same day, and was not kept in custody with unfounded charges that could lead to a 15-year prison sentence such as the case with the Belarusian opposition journalist Roman Protasevich who was aboard the Ryanair flight and was arrested upon its forced landing. Instead of being engaged in "whataboutism" (see our article Deny, Deceive, Defame and Deflect) and calling these practices "standard", the then-Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko apologised to Belarus for the incident.
Read similar disinfo cases alleging that forcing down aircraft is common practice among special forces, that the Ryanair case is similar to the forced landing of Evo Morales' plane, the Ryanair aircraft was forced to land just like the plane of Evo Morales in 2013.