EU bans Belarusian airlines from European skies | Hacker News Reader

EU bans Belarusian airlines from European skies

bbc.com

638 pointsxendo405 comments

Worth noting in all of this that Belarus recently closed their land borders to citizens [1], under the guise of COVID, but in reality to stop people leaving. The only way out was flying from Minsk, which is now even less of an option if there are no flights to the EU.

As others have said these sanctions will likely do more to harm the repressed citizens of the regime than Lukashenko

[1] https://www.bnt.eu/cs/zpravy/pravni-novinky/3137-belarus-int...

"As others have said these sanctions will likely do more to harm the repressed citizens of the regime than the Lukashenko"

I feel that that is true for almost all sanctions everywhere sadly. The Russians love their children too. In fact we have to really think hard on who they benefit, short and long term. Making markets more independent of each other is only making a war more likely. If goods don't cross borders armies will.

What is a better alternative? I don't know, but perhaps targeted educational pieces, like scientific papers to educate populations? Yeah it sounds like propaganda, but perhaps one can add methods to verify claims or something? Show how exactly a policy is detrimental to the population in question? It's a hard problem, I'm not claiming otherwise.

> In fact we have to really think hard on who they benefit

It will benefit air travellers whose planes will not get hijacked by the Belarus air force.

Forbidding non-Belarus based flights from flying over Belarus would accomplish that.

also treating this "incident" as a war act

As a war act? What does it mean in terms of practical steps?

Bomb one of their airbases. Russia can annex Crimea with no real response, so why should the EU show restraint? (I am not suggesting a bombing campaign, just a targeted strike on the airbase from which the intercepting fighter jet departed.) What’s Russia going to do? They want that Nord Stream pipeline. They aren’t going to militarily respond over some two bit dictator, even one friendly to Russia. The Nord Stream energy revenue is probably going to be much higher than the entire Belorussian economy.

> why should the EU show restraint?

... to avoid escalating a single incident into a war, which is one of the reasons it exists?

The closest this scenario can materialize in real life is being printed in one of Tom Clancy's books.

Nobody is going to bomb stuff over this.

And as much as I like labeling EU toothless [1] - banning Belarusian airlines is proportional and "hawkish" response.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=27263934&goto=item%3Fi...

I'd like to see a worldwide agreement that no country will ever stop a citizen from leaving, as long as they have permission to enter another country.

Even if the person is in prison or debt, they can always leave with just themselves to another country willing to take them.

If all nations agreed to that, we could stop worrying about most other human rights abuses, and country governance becomes more of a free market. If you don't like your own system of government, you can move to another. Countries would have an incentive to treat their people well, or see a mass exodus.

The free market has a pretty terrible track record when it comes to human rights, though.

What would countries stand to gain from this, realistically? No country wants economic refugees.

Why does Germamy willingly accept so many then? Genuinely curious

Either for humanitarian reasons, or because Germany has an ageing population and desperately needs young workers to support its welfare state.

mostly the latter - plus a need for more highly skilled workers in certain shortage occupations.

It is one. The majority of migrants, qualified or not, have a hard time getting work permits. Finding work, low paid but paid, isn't the main challenge. Doesn't do any good if you aren't allowed to take that work so.

Also, our social systems are doing well. Thanks for worrying.

"our social systems are doing well"

If you include pension systems, not so much. "Altersarmut" ("poverty of the old age") was not a widely used word in the 1990s, now it is a frequent topic in German media.

In many other European countries, old people live in their own properties with mortgages long paid off, so they aren't directly touched by rent increases. But Germans, for some reason, mostly like to live in rented flats and have a comparatively low home ownership rate, even in their old age. And the rents have grown quite a lot in big German cities. This means quite a squeeze for the elderly.

True. And we have Hartz IV, a national shame in my opinion. My point to OP was that, besides these facts, our social system is nowhere near to collapsing. No matter how many refugees we take in. That we as a nation, and that includes myself through our representative democracy, are ok with poor and old people being squeezed out of living space by rent seeking investors and treating people under Hartz IV as second class citizens is a different story. But we have elections in September, so there is a chance to shake things up a little bit.

Germany or the government of Germany?

There are a few countries who will pretty much let anybody in. Migrants often bring with them skills that the locals don't have, and in any mass migration, those who migrate (vs stay where they are) tend to be the fitter, smarter, richer people.

The main reason not to take migrants is you might see substantial economic losses as migrants send income back home to support family. You might alienate your existing population with conflicting cultures. And with enough immigration, the migrants might eventually outnumber the original population and persecute them (eg. indian reservations).

It's all a tradeoff, but I suspect there always a few countries worldwide who will take anyone.

you might see substantial economic losses as migrants send income back home to support family.

Is that a real problem? Assume they get paid in local currency (e.g. US dollars).

Option one; they buy a foreign currency with those US dollars, and send that foreign currency overseas. The dollars stay in the US and get spent.

Option two, they send those US dollars overseas; those US dollars ultimately either come back to the US to be spent (in which case the fact that they circled around the world matters as much as if they sat in a wallet in Utah for a year), or they never come back and the US is ahead on the deal, given that the worker did some work but US society will never need to hand over goods/services in exchange.

I guess my hypothesis is that either those US dollars get spent in the US, or they don't. If they do, it's just like a non-migrant worker. If they don't, US society got work done and didn't have to give back goods/services - bargain for US society.

> If they do, it's just like a non-migrant worker.

It isn't quite. Imagine dollars leave the US, get sent to Nigeria, and eventually return to the US to buy some music.

Compare that to the case where the dollars do not get sent to Nigeria, but remain in the US.

In the latter case, the Nigerian person wanting their music needs to find another source for the dollars to buy their music. That in turn makes the dollar more valuable, and reduces Nigerias buying power for US products and services.

Imagine dollars leave the US, get sent to Nigeria, and eventually return to the US to buy some music.

I'm definitely on board with the idea that if those dollars never return to the US, then the US effectively got free labour (which is why a trade deficit, I often suggest, isn't automatically a bad thing - it's free stuff, at least until the dollars all come back!), which is quite a win for the US, and given that of all dollars sent overseas, some will never come back, the US has a steady supply of free labour purely because migrant workers are sending dollars overseas (which sure feels like a win for the US).

So the only "downside" for the US is if those dollars sent overseas do eventually make their way back and buy something; at that point the US is handing over goods and services in exchange for that original work done by the migrant worker. Not so much a downside as a delayed fair exchange.

Let me just think out loud for a moment; sending the US dollars to our Nigerian chum, and him returning them to the US in exchange for something, is the same (barring people skiming off the top and postage etc.) as our migrant worker just buying something and posting that to the Nigerian chum. So I think I agree with what you say, but I hypothesise it's not making the US any worse off than the money not making that round trip and just being spent on goods/services in the US by the migrant worker (barring postage etc).

NOT sending the US dollars to our Nigerian chum, and him needing to source US dollars from somewhere else, does make the US dollar a tiny bit more valuable as there is a tiny increased demand for it. Whether that's a good or bad thing for the US, I couldn't say, but if the US dollar becomes too expensive, US exports go down. At this point I guess we're heading into second-order effects of what happens when US exports become too expensive, and I wouldn't like to run into that right now.

A currency exchange is a zero sum transaction. Whether it is US dollars or Philippine pesos makes no difference, the value stayed in-country.

When it gets sent overseas, it leaves the country and is spent elsewhere, so that is a loss in value for the originating country. The only value remaining would be whatever fee was charged on its way out.

I disagree.

If the US prints a million dollars, and some does a million dollars' worth of work in the US (or someone outside the US sends over a shipload of electronics in exchange for that big back of dollars) and moves that million dollars overseas, and those dollars never come back to be spent in the US, the US has gained. The US got a whole lot of work done, and did not have to give anyone goods or services in exchange.

The US has been doing this with a trade deficit for decades; giving people paper (or just numbers), which the US can make almost for free, in exchange for actual goods and services which people overseas happily send to the US. A trade deficit is free stuff. It's only a problem if the holder of all that paper comes back some day to spend it.

"When it gets sent overseas, it leaves the country and is spent elsewhere, so that is a loss in value for the originating country."

What value? The US did not give anyone goods or services, no goods from the US were transported to another country. What value was lost to the US? In the future, someone might come back with those dollars and exchange them for goods and services which they move outside the US. That would be a loss of value for the US, watching real goods and services go overseas.

> In the future, someone might come back with those dollars and exchange them for goods and services which they move outside the US.

That's pretty much the only reason anyone has for taking any foreign currency.

I disagree. A lot of the US dollars that are held outside the US seem to be held not with an intention of spending them in the US, but out of trust that everyone will always agree they're valuable.

USD has inherent value* because it can be exchanged for goods, property, and services in the US. Or to pay US taxes. The US has a lot of goods, property, and services that people want. US taxes are not a consideration for most people outside the US.

*Since most global trade is denominated in USD, and many countries use USD as their official currency, it can also be used to pay for goods, property, and services outside the US. But arguably it wouldn't have this global status if the US itself didn't have valuable goods, property, and services.

A currency remittance is potentially zero-sum. A currency exchange, that is changing one currency for another, is theoretically neutral.

> There are a few countries who will pretty much let anybody in.

Which ones? Any particularly large ones among them? "Mass migration" implies that there a ton of people inbound.

Canada certainly does not allow anybody in, but still more than a quarter of a million people are in each year.

Canada has pretty high standards though. You need some combination of language proficiency, education, skills, youth, health, and wealth.

There are countries that will let "anybody" in. There are countries that take large numbers of immigrants. I seriously doubt there are countries that do both.

> in any mass migration, those who migrate (vs stay where they are) tend to be the fitter, smarter, richer people.

Completely not true. Look at the migrations to the EU, as well as to the US. The “smarter, fitter, richer” people aren’t mass migrating from Latin America. Not at any significant percentage at least.

Partially true, maybe. At least towards the EU, they are not the poorest people either.

> smarter, fitter, richer

Compared to those left behind.

Obviously they might not be smarter, fitter and richer than people at the place they're arriving at, and that is one of the major reasons immigration is often restricted.

> The “smarter, fitter, richer” people aren’t mass migrating from Latin America

Not mass migrating but it isn't completely untrue either here in the EU, I keep meeting other Latin Americans like me who emigrated away and plan to never come back. It has only grown the past 5 years, of course I'm in a bubble of tech workers but most of the engineers I know who got a job in the EU from Latin America are some of the smartest and richer ones.

Does the not-free market have a better track record?

The phrase here is "The State" and no.

c. 30 states are "free", c. 130 are dictatorships now.

Those numbers get worse as you wind back the clock.

How are you defining "economic refugee"? Lots of countries benefit from people coming to that country to work. In many cases, those people end up as net contributors to the public purse; the individual is better off, the recipient country is better off.

This would not apply to "economic refugees", because those would - if unwelcome - lack the permission by the target nation to take them.

FYI US common law permits asylum claims by economic refugees.

Uh, anyone can make an asylum claim. An asylum claim is basically a plea to not be deported. It is usually a last ditch tactic when you are caught on US soil illegally, and you are not disputing that you are here illegally but are making a plea that you should not be returned anyway. It was a law introduced to aid Cuban boat refugees who were unable to apply for refugee visas and so always came here illegally.

The question is what are the grounds that would make such a plea legally successful, and being an economic refugee is not one of them. So while you are correct that economic refugees can make the claim, you are incorrect in that such a claim would succeed. People with red hair can also make the claim. Anyone can make the claim.

You are quite wrong. See Baballah v. Ashcroft

a lot of countries want "economic refugees", even the same politicians that are posturing against them

> No country wants economic refugees.

Depends on cultural differences and their qualification.

For example basically noone complains about Ukrainian/Belarusian programmers working in Poland.

There is quite significant presence of Ukrainians in Poland and it is widely accepted and so far no major problems happened.

> On 14 September 2018, 33,624 Ukrainian citizens possessed a permanent residence permit, and 132,099 had a temporary residence permit.[4] About 1 to 2 million Ukrainian citizens are working in Poland.[5][6] There are also 40,000 Ukrainian students in Poland.[6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainians_in_Poland

I don't think that would solve the North Korea, Uighur, Hong Kong, or Taiwan crisis. Holding China accountable would solve 70% of human rights abuses.

> Holding China accountable would solve 70% of human rights abuses.

Do you mean that "70% of human rights abuses" in china or worldwide? And if worldwide, do you think the 70% of human rights absuses happen in china or that other nations will stop based on the fear of consequences?

Right now my first impression was that you claim that 70% of all human rights abuses happen in china, which, to me, seems like it is very very wrong. But that would be an uncharitable reading, so I'd be interested in if I get it wrong.

Always assume the more charitable interpretation. I think the person was just being hyperbolic, and used "70%" to mean "a lot". Pedantic squabbling over the exact number of something that is essentially unknowable is not particularly helpful to anyone except for the human rights abusers.

With that out of the way: I do think that if there were a mechanism in place that was sufficient to hold a huge state such as China accountable, it actually would have a significant impact on worldwide human rights abuses. If China was not able to get around this, what options would smaller tin-pot dictators have other than to reform?

Proving to the world that the rules apply regardless of relative size/importance has significant downstream effects beyond the single entity that is brought down for noncompliance with those rules. Likewise, the visible lack of required accountability for large players undermines faith in the system and encourages smaller players to see what they can get away with.

I'd love to see something like this as well, but it's not going to happen as long as so many people and/or their governments don't like large influxes of people.

as long as they have permission to enter another country

The GP's statement wasn't about influx, but egress.

Hmm, okay, I didn't consider the permission issue enough maybe. In that case, the effect will, sadly, be negligible.

In Australia, it's currently a crime for citizens to leave without a permit. The system for permits is quite arbitrary, with some reporting approvals in minutes, and others reporting rejections without reason.

It is worth noting that a recent survey showed a vast majority of Australians preferring closed borders as we have been relatively unscathed from COVID.

> It is worth noting that a recent survey showed a vast majority of Australians preferring closed borders

Of course they do, but as with most other human rights declarations, these rules are there to protect the minority, not the majority.

>these rules are there to protect the minority, not the majority.

That's not clear.

Democracy protects the majority (but not always the minority); in an absence of democracy, the majority are also vulnerable to breaches of human rights.

Covid restrictions are also there to protect a minority, not the majority.

> In Australia, it's currently a crime for citizens to leave without a permit.

As long as a country allows a citizen to leave, it doesn't matter if it's also against local laws. It simply means that the person should expect punishment if they were to ever return.

But it doesn't - you need to show the permit to get on a flight.

Does no-one complain that it breaks The UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

I'm not sure how allowing people to leave is a covid risk.

Currently, the quarantine system for returning residents is entirely overloaded. Leakage of cases from quarantine has been common, leading to snap lockdowns.

Additionally, there aren’t many commercial flights right now, resulting in the government needing to supplement these with charter flights (but needing to balance this with not further overloading quarantine facilities). Some people have been waiting six months or more to find a flight home or to get onto a charter flight. There are constant news stories about desperate people who are trapped with no way to fly back.

So, the government has decided you need a permit to leave, either stating you have no intention to return in the medium-term, need to leave for compassionate reasons, or have an urgent need to travel.

I entirely disagree with the policy. People should be free to leave, but then if they can’t find a flight home, that’s their issue.

However, the government seems concerned about the optics of seeing people on the nightly news, crying that the government won’t give them a seat on a charter flight.

That seems like it would give carte blanche for criminals to flee the country to avoid justice.

*only if someone will take them

Maybe I'm cynical but I'd bet money on people being able to turn this into a business...

I'd actually be fine with criminals using this to leave my country...

Housing and feeding criminals is expensive. Letting them leave permanently is in my eyes a better solution.

Which would become an one-way route, because once a nation has become a criminal-refugee paradise, why would third countries accept them travelling to their shores?

>I'd like to see a worldwide agreement that no country will ever stop a citizen from leaving, as long as they have permission to enter another country.

It's in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 13 Section 2:

>Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

Of course, it's not clear how much legal force the UDHR has.

> Of course, it's not clear how much legal force the UDHR has.

I think we all know the answer to this question :)

> Of course, it's not clear how much legal force the UDHR has.

It's perfectly clear - zero, unless the violation is so egregious other countries are willing to go to war over it.

> Of course, it's not clear how much legal force the UDHR has.

Depending on the jurisdiction. It has a lot of legal force in countries that are members of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR; violations go to that court if they are not satisified by local courts or other means of member states; member states usually respect the Court's decisions). Belarus applied for membership in 1993 but was never admitted, because well I think it's clear why.

> much legal force the UDHR has.

They won't enforce it, they won't even say anything. Upon request they'll even hand over the names of people of interest to regimes that wish to execute or torture innocent people. See the UNHRs response to handing over names of Uighurs.

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/human-rights-whistleblower...

"it's not a problem"

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/22/china-rejects-uighu...

When you're talking about exit bans, that's something China is known for, and it's gotten bad enough that the US State Department mentions it. (That was a long time coming)

A country would turn into "religious terrorism refugee land" and people would murder nonbelievers and then immigrate there.

Russia would assassinate people and the assassins would have safe travel home.

Billionnaires would murder their divorcing spouses then flee to billionnaire refugee land with their money.

All of these three already happened

You are missing the point that none of these happened without the criminal taking the risk that they would be caught before escaping the country where the crime occured.

The proposal is to make the law change so these are risk-free crimes. The law would not be a deterent to commiting crimes.

The fun thing about this proposal is when people say they want "countries to compete" they are often pushing for a market solution for the rich to get richer. But in this case it would hurt rich and poor alike. Jeff Bezos has little to gain from american law to be optional for americans and anyone to be able to murder him and opt out of the law by leaving the country.

> Russia would assassinate people and the assassins would have safe travel home.

They already largely do. Also, in many countries that have experienced illiberal trends recently, they can still get you emigrated abroad and they still have power over you abroad.

As the journalist Sarah Kendzior says “This is a transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government.”

To win something like this, it is better that large amounts of people who can stay be able to as long as feasibly possible. Once people leave en masse (sometimes there is no choice) the situation only gets uglier. But you do absolutely have to know when to leave.

> Countries would have an incentive to treat their people well, or see a mass exodus

Only the ones with options to leave. That is, people with money or skills.

People (me and friends) reroute their travel through Moscow to get to Minsk now. Annoying but still i believe that this is a right decision from eu side.

That transit in Moscow can be risky to some politically exposed persons.

As opposed to, say, travelling to Minsk?

Is it? Who is at risk in Moscow but not in Minsk?

Yeah, but it is one of the last options that does not involve using buses\trains to get to minsk rn.

Russia and Belarus are very close allies. I doubt anyone who is at risk by transiting in Moscow would be safe in Minsk

You think Russia would risk having their planes banned all through Europe to give a two bit dictator a reporter?

You think EU would give Russia the same treatment as Belarus?

Good question. Who knows, all I know is that it is time to really de-escalate relations between the big power blocks. At the same time Western democracies have to put limits on what totalitarian regimes, true and wannabe ones, are allowed to get away with. These things seem to be mutually exclusive so. I always thought the Putin is the most dangerous and cunning leader the world currently has. I also thought that this cunning would prevent him from doing anything stupid. Not so sure anymore about the last bit anymore, given with what he got away with so far.

Don't ask me what Western powers should do so. Given the loss in soft power in the last decade, throwing out human rights by the EU during the refugee crisis and ever since, the new alliance between Israel and Saudi Arabia, Trumps foreign policy, options seem to be limited.

The EU knows it can’t risk a major energy supply (as evidenced by Gazprom running roughshod over Vestager).

Russia has murdered dissidents multiple times in foreign capitals in plain view (resulting in other civilian deaths) most recently the Novichok murders. They don't care about what the west thinks and likely approved this operation too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Sergei_and_Yulia_...

They shot down a passenger jet not all that long ago and got away with it.

That's not true actually. Not a fan of the modern Russia but a fan of accuracy. That plane was shot down by rebel Donbass forces by mistake. They were not well trained and mistook it for a military plane.

Nobody is going to ban Russia. Look at the map. How do you think they'd fly between EU and China/Japan? Over Russian territory. Case closed, even not talking about nukes and stuff, just on economic reasons. For heaven's sake, they are finishing a major gas pipeline between Russia and Germany (look up North Stream 2), what bans could there be? Russia is not Belarus (even though Belarus is definitely a puppet of Russia) and EU would not dare to go as far, however nice it would sound. And Putin knows that very well.

Eu: Bans Russian air traffic Russia: Stops selling oil to EU

Who wins? Who flinches first?

> Russia and Belarus are very close allies. I doubt anyone who is at risk by transiting in Moscow would be safe in Minsk

You cannot really call them allies. Better to say its Beijing, and Pyongyang type relationship.

Lukasenka can't even sneeze without Kremlin's approval.

just out of curiosity, are you worried that posts such as this one could land you in trouble at some point? or are you taking steps like using a VPN for this?

I am living outside of Belarus right now in a country with decent government, so i don't really worry about this. But ofc i use my own wireguard vpn and mtproto proxy for telegram when i am traveling to Belarus. I am not going to censor myself, but it pays to be cautious.

As proven by the fact that a regime critic just caused a plane to be diverted, living outside of Belarus is by itself unfortunately no longer a guarantee for safety. So please be very careful.

I appreciate your concern, but lets be real.

I am a nobody, Raman was a prominent opposition figure even before aug 2020 and ex-editor of NEXTA (biggest belarusian opposition channel on tg). He was arrested because of his relation to NEXTA. Me? I am just a dude, who works\lives abroad and has to deal with shit that my beloved leader pulls off.

Reason why people in Belarus are getting arrested for stuff like commenting/posting, is because they leave their bio\phone number\sensitive stuff open or do it on socials that are working with cops (viber, vk, whatsapp etc). HN is perfect because you can use 5 minute mail to create an account. Regular cops wont be able to dox you unless they have your phone. It is very different if you got attention from KGB or other dudes. But you have to be prominent enough to do that.

And finally. I can post/comment on HN as much as i want because HN is very far from being of any interest to cops. Small site, most days purely tech themed, that is 100% in english.

> socials that are working with cops ... whatsapp

WhatsApp?

I've checked again, and most posts about fines\arrests that i was able to find were related to screenshots of groupchats, and no data requests were done to whatsapp itself. My bad.

Viber worked actively with cops while their head office was in Minsk, even after Rakuten acquisition.

VK, and other companies that are located in Russia, especially those that are owned by mail.ru group, are actively working with cops.

Ok, thanks

While it may vary by the government or jurisdiction in question, whatsapp is definitely compromised at the LE/Judicial level in some places. This leads me to believe that in fact it is universally compromised, though I have no direct evidence to support that conclusion.

Be more specific.

Compromised how? Which places?

I’m not the author, but yes it might.

The regime is getting crazier and they eventually might start cleansing folks who said something online. Or their relatives. You just never know.

What about Kiev? Is it a worse option?

They could still fly to Russia or Ukraine and then cross the land border into an EU country. Maybe Ukraine would follow suit though, they can benefit from better relations with the EU.

Ukraine is also planning to ban flights to and from Belarus: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/24/world/europe/belarus-flig...

> As others have said these sanctions will likely do more to harm the repressed citizens of the regime than Lukashenko

That's true of all sanctions anywhere. It's not fundamentally possible to target "the government" of a nation without targeting the people it governs.

This sounds suspiciously like North Korea to me. Still crazy how they put that plane down with jets and then escorted the plane out of the county...

Just a small correction, the plane never left their airspace

> As others have said these sanctions will likely do more to harm the repressed citizens of the regime than Lukashenko

There are simply too many repressed citizens for them to all flee, so allowing some to flee might be just unfair, and also counterproductive because then you are left with only underpriviledged and repressed citizens.

This is not exact, the EU ban decision is not taken yet. see link here: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2021...

    "- calls on the Council to adopt the necessary measures to ban overflight of EU airspace by Belarusian airlines and prevent access to EU airports of flights operated by such airlines;"

decision has still to be made by the council, and then - to my understanding - implemented by all member states one by one. It's a typical example of media interpretation of facts.

See here https://en.belavia.by/news/4674378/ -> Belavia confirms UK and FR banned, but it was their decision.

Thanks, thanks for revealing that I should trust journalism even less than I thought.

I now noticed that

> The EU has decided to ban Belarusian airlines from European skies

has "decided" not "implemented" or "started", so technically it is matching reality, even if misleading.

"Cock-up before conspiracy": problem in this case is that journalists do not understand EU process. In fairness to them it is not straightforward and in any field of politics something is said to be "done" at many different junctures: for example when it is politically inevitable, when it is informally agreed, once it has been formally agreed and then, of course, once it has actually been effected.

my comment was without political meaning : I have relatives who need to fly to minsk from EU on Saturday for family reasons, I'm just monitoring the legal status.

The BBC story is https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-57236489

With a headline of "EU agrees new Belarus sanctions after plane arrest"

It states

> The EU has decided to ban Belarusian airlines from European skies after a flight was diverted to Minsk on Sunday and a dissident journalist arrested.

The specific release from the meeting: - calls on the Council to adopt the necessary measures to ban overflight of EU airspace by Belarusian airlines and prevent access to EU airports of flights operated by such airlines;

Seems reasonable reporting to me, the EU has decided to do it, and is now implementing that decision.

Further in the article

> The UK has suspended the operating permit for Belarusian state airline Belavia, and EU leaders have called on member states to take similar action.

That the HN submitter changed the headline is hardly a damning indictment of journalism

(The headline of the .com version was the same at 6:27 GMT)

https://web.archive.org/web/20210525062723if_/https://www.bb...

For all practical matters that is the same. Of course member states have to implement it. The EU is (still?) not one country.

What counts is that the leaders of all EU countries agreed to it. So it will happen.

Let's see how it evolves: I think every country shall make its cost-benefit analysis, and the ones with nothing or very little to lose shall ban. I would bet on medium compliance.

The thing is, to put it bluntly, it's Belarus. Almost all of them have nothing to lose. I imagine air traffic over Belarus can be avoided with minimal financial losses and Belarus itself only generates a small amount of traffic. Plus some of the countries voting for this are actively hostile to Belarus (I think Lithuania is in that category).

The only thing that would make them change their minds is if Russia reacts somehow.

> I imagine air traffic over Belarus can be avoided with minimal financial losses and Belarus itself only generates a small amount of traffic

The ban is for Belarusian airlines over EU members countries. The one who is being targeted to be "financially hurt" is not the EU countries themselves but the Belarusian airlines. I'm sure they'll feel the impact very soon, as they'll basically need to cancel every flight unless it goes to Russia.

It's probably going to be both ways, though. I can't imagine Belarus not retaliating (though the EU has already decided to avoid their airspace, anyway).

For an airline, it's much easier to fly around Belarus and not land in Belarus, than to fly around the EU and not land in the EU.

I guess they shouldn't have done what they did, right? :-)

Russia could react by operating flights from Minsk using its own companies that have a permit to fly over the EU. Otherwise this is in fact doing the Kremlin a service since it makes Belarus even more dependent on Russia. Lukashenko has been digging his own hole when he ordered that the plane be diverted to Minsk in order to arrest that poor guy and his girlfriend. Now his only "friend" is Putin.

> I think every country shall make its cost-benefit analysis

Nope, that the ban will happen has already passed, which is what this article is about. What hasn't happened yet is that the executive order in each country has yet to happen, but that won't include extensive debate as the decision that has been taken is a united front for the participating countries.

Actively ignoring already agreed orders to pass would be going against their own interest of a united front, which obviously would go against the core principle of the EU, so unlikely to happen.

Decisions like this by the Council are legally binding on member states. Similar to how GDPR is technically implemented by each state's relevant government agency.

> This is not exact, the EU ban decision is not taken yet. see link here: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2021...

The decision is taken. You are misunderstanding what you are reading.

The press release follows an urgent meeting from the Council. The Council is the reunion of all the EU heads of state. They have already agreed to the ban. The sentence you are quoting just means that they now have to pass the corresponding executive orders in their respective countries which, as you are rightfully pointing, has already been done by France.

Obviously the decision has to be implemented by all member states one by one. That's how the EU works. It's the case for every decision taken and law passed by the EU.

The misreading stems from the editorialising xendo did with the headline. xendo submitted "2 hours ago", so between 0629 and 0729 GMT.

The BBC headline at 0627 GMT was "EU agrees new Belarus sanctions after plane arrest"

https://web.archive.org/web/20210525062723if_/https://www.bb...

HN mods should correct the headline to match the article.

Planes from Minsk are travelling from and to Stockholm as we speak. For what it's worth Swedish authorities claim decision not taken by EU yet.

Dear WastingMyTime89 (<-- not at all!): Excellent post. Thank you to clarify these important details! I wonder if but other (non-EU) European states will follow suit, such as United Kingdom, Norway, Switzerland, etc.

Switzerland is interesting. There's no way for a plane to get to it without crossing EU airspace.. I wonder how that plays out.

In the interests of pedantry, there are several ways. The simplest might by to bring the plane over land. There's also the option of going above the vertical limit of the controlled airspace, which seems to be debated, although it must be at least 30km, and less than the boundary with "space" which must be near the Kármán line at around 100km. A tunnel would be possible also, but prohibitively expensive. It would probably be cheaper and easier to get Hungary and Austria to leave the EU.

Barge up the Rhine

The UK has already done it.

"The UK has suspended the operating permit for Belarusian state airline Belavia, and EU leaders have called on member states to take similar action."

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57236489

Given that Minsk to London Gatwick is Belavia's furthest west flight (B2851, three times per week), this has limited effect.

Belavia has no reason to fly over UK airspace otherwise.

> That's how the EU works. It's the case for every decision taken and law passed by the EU.

Not exactly. It depends on the area of law one is in.

For some areas of law the EU itself can create law in itself which immediately becomes law in the member states, overriding member state's laws (typically via EU Regulation)

But this works only in areas where EU contracts give those powers to EU.

Of course this then still depends on execution by the member states, but it is a law and affected citizens can sue accordingly if a member doesn't execute.

Air control is related to defense etc. and is not such an area, thus EU's powers are limited and individual member states have to agree according to their individual legal frameworks.

That's true - it's also worth explicitly noting that when the EU does make law directly, that is still done in a fully democratic way.

The fact that that EU laws can override national laws does not mean that the EU Commission has unilaterally imposed law without consent. Law changes must first must be approved by the Council - comprising heads of state - and then by the EU parliament, consisting of directly elected representatives from all member states.

I know you weren't asserting otherwise - I just wanted to provide additional important context for those who wouldn't otherwise be aware.

> fully democratic ... by the EU parliament, consisting of directly elected representatives

I'd argue a full democracy would be democracy by plebiscite.

Whether representative or direct democracy is better is an open question.

To me, full democracy just means a democratic system which enjoys the consent of the majority of the people. It could be parliamentary, presidential, proportional representation, direct democracy, whatever. I don't think outsiders or third parties have a right to decide whether a system of rule that enjoys the support of the people 'counts' or not.

That's entirely independent of my view that direct democracy is a terrible mistake because it decouples responsibility for making a decision from responsibility for implementing it *. However, if you can persuade a population that it's right for them, then fine.

* We can see this with the Brexit referendum. For 2 years the UK had a government and parliament that didn't want to leave the EU responsible for implementing legislation and a treaty to leave it. The result was political paralysis. Fortunately we now have a government aligned with the goal, but that's just pure luck.

> * We can see this with the Brexit referendum. For 2 years the UK had a government and parliament that didn't want to leave the EU responsible for implementing legislation and a treaty to leave it. The result was political paralysis. Fortunately we now have a government aligned with the goal, but that's just pure luck.

That's not entirely accurate. Theresa May called a snap election within a year (explicitly on the basis of building a stronger base to achieve Brexit) that resulted in a lessened majority for the pro-Brexit faction. The paralysis in Brexit was caused by the question of where the customs border would lie in a Brexit world: on the Irish island (jeopardizing the Good Friday Agreement), in the Irish Sea (jeopardizing the UK), or around Great Britain as well (negating most of the point of Brexit), on which point the British government effectively refused to provide an answer until almost the last possible moment.

That's quite right, this is the trickiest issue. However if Brexit had been decided in the usual way then responsibility for addressing and resolving that issue would have been clear. So a party would have put Brexit in their manifesto, campaigned on the issue of delivering Brexit, and perhaps held a referendum to double-guarantee they had a solid mandate to do it. This is the exact process we followed to join 'Europe' in the first place, after all.

Instead the May government utterly collapsed the moment it got anywhere close to actually delivering anything. We're very, very lucky that Boris ended up leading the Conservative Party on a deliver Brexit platform and got a solid majority.

And I say this as a dedicated, thoroughgoing Remainer that will never forgive Boris for his sheer political opportunism over Brexit in the first place. But still. My attitude is, we eventually did have an election on the issue and a government committed to the goal, so let's get on and do it, and get it over with.

Right. I didn't want to elude in all of that.

It becomes quite complex, but any system, which tries to bring more than 400M oppionons together, while giving a voice to minorities and dealing with complicated issues is inherently complex.

> The press release follows an urgent meeting from the Council. The Council is the reunion of all the EU heads of state. They have already agreed to the ban. The sentence you are quoting just means that they now have to pass the corresponding executive orders in their respective countries which, as you are rightfully pointing, has already been done by France.

That's not what the quoted sentence ("calls on the Council to adopt the necessary measures to ban overflight of EU airspace by Belarusian airlines and prevent access to EU airports of flights operated by such airlines") means. The quoted sentence is the European Council calling on the Council of the European Union to act. The two bodies are distinct despite their very similar names. In the European Council, the member states are represented by their heads of state or government; in the Council of the European Union, the member states are represented by lower-ranked government ministers (finance ministers, foreign ministers, agriculture ministers, transport ministers, etc). The European Council sets the political direction, but (with rare exception) lacks legislative powers. So here the European Council is calling on the Council of the European Union to enact legislation. Of course the Council of the European Union is going to do what the European Council says. But the Council of the European Union needs to wait for the Commission's lawyers to draft the legislation, etc.

The Council of the European Union actually has legislative powers in this area. Based on the wording of the European Council conclusions, I think we can expect formal legislation from the Council of the European Union to enforce the ban. That doesn't stop the member states from acting themselves (under emergency powers they retain) before the ban has formally passed at the EU level. And of course the member states have to enforce the ban, and the EU has only limited recourse if member states refuse (in many but not all cases, the Commission can take the member state to the European Court of Justice). But I doubt that's going to be an issue here, I think there is a clear political consensus in this case.

Yes France has already implemented this decision, without any involvement from the Council of the European Union.

To be horribly pedantic about it, they haven't actually implemented the decision because the decision hasn't formally been enacted yet. (Decision is actually a technical term in European Union law – EU legislative acts can be classified as directives, regulations, decisions, or recommendations. I'm not sure in this case what type of legislative instrument they are going to use – it could be either a regulation or a decision, it won't be a directive or a recommendation.)

They've just decided to do the same thing independently while they wait.

Yes, definitely pedantic.

If it's restricting flights over their airspace then it only really needs Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. And I'm sure they would be quick to implement such a ruling, as even before this incident they weren't on the best of terms with Belarus.

It's important that the EU acts as a block.

Also, it sounds wrong that they can allegedly ban Belarusian planes from "European" skies, with Belarus being a country in Europe...

By European skies, they just mean the skies over the European Union. News articles routinely say Europe when they man the European Union. Sometimes confusingly, but I think the context is clear here.

It's clearly wrong, that it's pretty common to write it like that doesn't make it any better.

Only half-related detail, the European track cycling championships are in Minsk next month: http://www.uec.ch/en/event/149/2021-uec-track-elite-european...

The Dutch cycling union is now recommending its athletes not to compete there.

I'm not familiar with all of the bureaucracy and hierarchies of the organising bodies, but it looks like a Belarussian and a Russian were elected to the management board of the UEC in March [1]. It will be interesting to see how that affects decisions.

[1] https://minskeurotrack.com/en/news/news/20210329-the-chief-o...

WADA multi-year ban of Russia -- the entire country -- prohibits them from international competition. The very few Russian athletes who pass special criteria can compete stateless. Why would track cycling allow any Russian official near a position of authority, especially in a strength/explosiveness sport?

Because for any "council", "federation", "organisation", "committee", the sport is not about the sport, but about money, power and influence of people in the aforementioned group.

The IIHF World Hockey Championships should have taken right now in Minsk and Riga. They are currently taking place only in Riga. I'm sure no one regrets that decision right now.

Unfortunately Belarus were allowed to participate.

There was also a controversy over the removal of Belarusian flags in Riga yesterday: https://twitter.com/IIHFHockey/status/1397115536815935491

Nice that something more than strongly worded letters was done.

I'm not sure how much more it is

For start, it has some real - though minimal - impact, unlike typical strongly worded letters.

I'm not entirely sure belavia is even profitable in the first place

Hopefully now it will deteriorate even more.

They just lost roughly ⅓ of their destinations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Belavia_destinations

The only things in Belarus that are profitable are IT companies.

Which BTW brings up a question of big international corporations outsourcing to authoritarian countries. Should they be punished financially for being complicit in breaking human rights?

The only way for bourgeoisie revolution to occur is to have bourgeoisie.

A dictator would be perfectly happy flogging peasants until the end of time, see north korea for reference.

I'd say banning Belorusian airlines after Belorus hijacked a plane (and kidnapped passengers) is like having your kid kidnapped and proclaiming that the kidnapper isn't welcome in your house.

Edit: s/Belorussian/Belorusian

Friendly sidenote: people from the country of "Belarus" call themselves "Belarusians" (pronounced like "bela-roo-sians", not like "bela-russians" / "belo-russians").

Still, better that welcoming kidnapper and his family for the birthday of younger sister.

And I expected such behavior, so I am pleasantly surprised.

Just shows how we have very low standards.

Not really, because here the hijacker is not one-dimensional, the EU still has options to meaningufully retaliate. Really meaningful retaliation however would also hit Russia as this thing was orchestrated by them, by for example finally stopping Nordstream.

They also sanctioned involved individuals. It's more like a family kidnaps their own kid while he was at your birthday party, and as response you get a restraining order and freeze some of their bank accounts.

The citizenship of the victim doesn't really matter.

You're are not the property of the country where you are a citizen. Especially, not if you live abroad.

Are you saying a kid is the property of his family...?

Anyway, citizenship matters, it is one of the many elements that determine jurisdiction. The US taxes and prosecutes (!) his citizens anywhere in the world, for example; and extradition is a thing.

Legal protection to a foreign citizen abroad is extended by the host country, and that's really what the problem is here: the journalist was effectively protected by European law at all times (going from EU country to EU country with a EU airline), but Belarus invaded our legal space with a competing jurisdiction claim and enforced it with guns and subterfuge. That cannot be allowed.

> Are you saying a kid is the property of his family...?

Hehe, I'll admit that's not a good argument.

> but Belarus invaded our legal space with a competing jurisdiction claim...

They violated an international convention on to which they had signed. In turn it seems reasonable that we no longer extend any benefits pertaining to said convention.

Which is sort of exactly what we're doing.

> Are you saying a kid is the property of his family...?

As far as kidnapping or any other kind of forced movement goes, yes basically.

I think you'll find quite a few legal systems currently disagree with that perspective. I'll give you that it's often the traditional perspective, but the children's wellbeing is increasingly the leading priority of related legislation in developed countries, including on issues like forced movement.

That only matters if there is a conflict, and forced movement rarely causes harm.

Sanctioning individuals annoys the individuals but it rarely has any meaningful political effect.

It's kind of a sign of weakness.

It wasn't one of the EU's citizens, it was a Belarusian citizen. They are a sovereign country with the full backing of Russia. I would say this is the minimum the EU needed to do, and probably some sanctions on the leadership as well. It's hard to do much more without further deteriorating relations with Russia. I prefer to avoid a tank war in Eastern Europe, thank you very much.

They hardly have any airlines in Belarus, may be only one Belavia may be of any significant size.

Flying over Belarus might be a good income for the country - no longer.

An interesting shift of the last decade or so of sanction wars is that sanctions must be targeted against the regime, not the people. Otherwise it's a bit of an own goal - you give the regime a bogeyman to point at.

As such, this seems like a good, pragmatic type of sanction. Few regular Belarusians will feel the impact, but it does strike at the regime, even if it seems like small change.

I'm not sure if Belarussians having to cancel their holidays to the West and going to Crimea instead is going to have the desired effect of driving sympathies among Belarussians toward the west.

Moreover the people who actually like Lukashenko will probably be pretty indifferent to this. They weren't planning on flying to Berlin any time soon. I'm almost certain Putin will jump on the chance to have alternate routes to Russian tourist destinations opened up (possibly even subsidized, like he did for flights to Crimea).

I'm starting to wonder if Lukashenko/Putin wasn't counting on this kind of knee jerk reaction. If sanctions were on the cards anyway, with this stunt they got to pick the timing, reason and type.

Edit : not a popular analysis, it seems...

Ye you don't want to isolate dictatures. That prevents change. Just fly around the country from now on and don't punnish the people ...

The desired effect is to increase pressure on Lukashenko and I'm sure every holidaymaker with a ruined trip knows very well whose stupid stunt is to blame for it.

Holidaymakers who were unlikely to be Lukashenko supporters in the first place and who now can't come home and tell people how great the West is.

I don't think he's losing out that badly here. Indeed, increased isolation from the West may have been a goal from the outset. Having the West do it for him is even better.

> Holidaymakers who were unlikely to be Lukashenko supporters in the first place and who now can't come home and tell people how great the West is.

Now even his supporters have to make every foreign flight through Moscow as a constant reminder of what great relations the potato czar has with rest of the world. Dictatorship are very sensitive to image issues (see Winnie the Pooh).

On the practical side, it starves Belarus of overflying fees. The stunt will cost them hundreds of millions, and hopfully further targeted sanctions will make whatever's left (and funneled into their private accounts by the regime) more difficult to spend.

>Dictatorship are very sensitive to image issues (see Winnie the Pooh).

Of course. That's why they goaded the West into sanctioning them for the most hypocritical reason they could.

"Western hypocrisy" is a key plank of Russian propaganda that works decently well at keeping them suspicious, afraid and angry at us. It's used similarly by Democrats on their base against Republicans and vice versa to great effect at keeping the base fired up.

Belarus is not Russia but I'm sure the same applies there.

>The stunt will cost them hundreds of millions

This is probably why RT stated that Putin was willing to step in to help out financially. I expect that was actually even agreed ahead of time.whol

Lukashenko on the whole would probably prefer that as much foreign aid and investment came from Russia as possible. It's his opponents who will want to demonstrate all the great stuff Western investment can do for the country.

And, of course, Putin would prefer it if we severed links given the strategic importance of the country. He doesn't want another Ukraine.

> Few regular Belarusians will feel the impact

Why do you think this is the case? The regime isn't flying on a public airline. If you're a regular Belarusian trying to travel to/from the West, these actions are only making your life worse.

Hmm, I jumped to the conclusion that a lot of traffic in and out of Belarus will be via land. Not really sure why!

Travelling by land has gotten much more complicated over the last year. Before, to travel to Russia all i had to do is to get a ticket, there was no border between Russia and Belarus. Fell asleep on a train in Minsk, woke up in Moscow\Saint-Petersburg. Nice.

Now the only reason that i am able to travel to/through Russia to Belarus willy-nilly is because i have direct relatives that are now citizens\residents there. I have to have copies of their documents, like passport & document confirming that they are residents and are residing in Russia legally. During last year i had to forfeit a set of documents that would allow me to travel there[0]. Only reason why it worked was because border point was mostly analogue, and in general they were unable to verify that the doc was real. More of a loophole rather than straight hack but still.

Things are not great if you want to travel to\from EU by land. Since august-september 2020 "due to corona" you are allowed to travel "outside" once in 6 months over the land border [1]. There is no limitation on how people can _enter_ the country. Get a visa and you are good to go. Weird? yea. Dumb? hell yea. Think about that like it is an anemic attempt to stop people from leaving the country. Iirc before August there was no limits set by gov on how people can travel at all.

[0] https://russiamedtravel.ru/en/ [1] https://gpk.gov.by/covid-19/

It is the only one.

The problem is that EU itself is closed due to COVID(we can't get visas renewed) + we have internal ban on transit through ground borders due to COVID(but most likely to prevent people from moving out permanently)

So essentially, with this ban it is hard to escape if situation goes south.

On the contrary. Our political elites are unable to find political and diplomatic answers. Resorting to bans and sanctions is weak. Inability and unwillingnes to talk to each other will make the people suffer. The ultimate suffering is civil unrest and war. The big picture to me is a very dark one: The world is preparing for war. This is just another side note to heigthen tensions.

There is an appropriate answer for every act. In this case, if Belarus forces an airliner flying over their territory to divert to Minsk with a made-up bomb threat, and even sends a fighter jet to make sure that the pilots get the message, the appropriate answer is bans and sanctions - anything less than that would be seen as weak.

> Resorting to bans and sanctions is weak.

No, endless talk with no action is weak and pathetic. Mafia states will shit on you if you show unwillingness to stand for yourself. Biden lifted sanctions on Nord Stream and three days later you have this stunt. Let that be a lesson. Every incoming president has had such trial by fire.

They call for blood. You call for blood. This won't lead to less blood. As I stated in my comment and as you casually confirmed. I don't want blood at all.

> They call for blood. You call for blood. This won't lead to less blood.

Yes it will, because Belarus nor Russia are in a position for any serious confrontation. As soon as you call their bluff, they will retreat, as they have done many times before. Their power comes from YOUR FEAR and unwillingness to react appropriately to their provocations.

Both Rusia and Belarus are mafia states that serve as piggy banks to oligarchs, who belong to the global elite. When their status, access and financial wellbeing takes a hit from sanctions, oligarchs will tell their public-facing puppets to tone down and seek better relations.

Oligarhs are not hermits like Kim from the Best Korea or leaders of Middle Eastern theocracies. Their families live in the west, because Russia is a dangerous shithole; they own luxury apartments in NYC and houses in the best parts of London. They spend their holidays in Los Angeles, Southern France and elsewhere. Their kids and wives want to live like the rich people they see on Instagram and in Hollywood movies. They are not willing to give this westernized life up, and that's the string to pull them by: identify key power brokers and their inner circles and target them mercilessly.

I am truly sorry to say so. This is very simplistic, aggressive and arrogant. I don't want to excuse what has happened but we are in desperate need for way more capable and resourceful political elites.

Yeah, bend over and take another load. What will it be next time? A drive-by shooting of a dissident and a bunch of bystanders in Trafalgar Square? Another airliner shootdown? Russian tanks in Kiev?

They've already started two wars, murdered countless people home and abroad, blown up ammo depots on NATO territory, shot down an airliner, now hijacked another. How stupid can you be to continue this appeasement. Why should they stop?

It is still largely symbolic - in last few months Lukashenka has implemented various travel restrictions with the west (both for political reasons and also to limit emigration/brain-drain as e.g. various IT companies were relocating Belarus employees to Poland/Lithuania/etc) and there was a feeling that he might have restricted flights or the ability to fly anyway - so now the same result gets achieved not by the prohibitions of the regime but can be blamed on the "evil neighbours".

It's perhaps somewhat similar to sanctions against Russia which were followed by Russia-imposed sanctions on importing e.g. cheese, which has the benefit of improving trade balance (as people aren't consuming imported products) and any discontent of the people is blamed on the western sanctions; the regime wants to ban certain things but it has less impact on people's satisfaction if the ban can be blamed on everyone else.

Yeah, Belavia already considering mass layoffs. If somebody is happy that workers of Belavia will be punished instead of Lukashenko - maybe they need to think more.

I am surprised Hungary agreed. And Poland.

The governments in those nations are not shy to touch on the freedoms of their population, and often disagree with the EU when the EU points these things out. Also Poland being directly next to Belarus will affect their relations.

Poland-Belarus relations are icy at best, since Belarus is a sock-puppet of Russia, while Poland is strongly aligned with the US.

Poland has been strongly anti-Lukashenka for a long time, and since 2007 broadcasts a Belarusian-language satellite TV channel (Belsat). It's probably the only non-regime-controlled Belarusian speaking TV.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belsat_TV

Fear of Russia is the few things Hungary and Poland and rest of most of EU have in common.

Ever heard of Paks 2?

Disagreeing with the EU != equivalent to an authoritarian regime.

Politics is more complicated than Good Guys vs. Bad Guys.

Of course, but both of them can be true at the same time. I wouldn't call either of those countries an authoritarian regime, but they've both moved several steps in that direction.

Your parent said: "disagree with the EU when the EU points these things out". And that definitely happened, the EU has been saying "we're concerned about that" for a while now, and the only response has been "nah, it's fine".

Hungary is objectively an authoritarian regime because it

removed separation of powers,

stacked court with political appointees,

closed down virtually all independent press,

made state TV into a propaganda piece for Fidesz,

etc.

Not because it "disagrees with the EU".

I fail to see how this is different than other EU countries.

E.g. the head of the German constitutional court has been a recent member of parliament for 12 years. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephan_Harbarth

How is that not a political appointment?

And I have not yet seen any state TV which is not sympathetic to the government bureaucracy. If you are being paid by the state, you are not going to be too critical of the state. You don't see much critical of the German government in the supposedly independent German state TV, except maybe statements that restrictions of basic rights are not drastic enough...

So either Germany is also an authoritarian regime, or what is happening in Hungary is not that out of the ordinary.

Are you seriously using whataboutism on Germany about Hungary's current situation?

Go get more informed, please, here are some resources:

[1] https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/04/01/hungarys-authoritarian-t...

[2] https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2020/0409/From-democr...

[3] https://djilp.org/hungarys-road-to-authoritarianism-through-...

[4] https://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/news/ten-years-viktor-or...

>I fail to see how this is different than other EU countries.

That's a pretty colossal scale of failure, IMHO.

Inability to conform to platonic ideals of democracy and transparency != blatant autocracy.

So you think the head of the constitutional court being an active politician with 12 years in parliament is a minor deviation from a platonic ideal? That is exactly the same as what the OP mentioned.

The German constitutional court is stacked with political appointees.

Sure, the situation in Hungary might be even worse. But western countries in the last decade have completely lost the moral high ground.

You can not imprison journalists like Julian Assange in solitary confinement in conditions that amount to torture, and then complain about lack of press freedom in other countries.

You can not pick your party colleague to lead the constitutional court and then complain about political court appointees in other countries.

This kind of selective outrage is just ridiculous.

That's one guy in a constitutional court of 16 members, and he wasn't a political appointment but was elected by the German parliament (something like a parliament, I'm no expert on the german system).

Assange was put in prison for being a bail jumper wanted on rape allegations. He's now in a perfectly ordinary British prison, going through the usual extradition process under politically independent judicial authority. There's no guarantee he will even be extradited.

Viktor Orban is now functionally a dictator ruling by emergency decree, and has effectively neutralised the constitutional court. They even retroactively invalidated all decisions made by the court before 2012 for goodness sake! There is no way shape or form in which this can be meaningfully equated to anything else in the history of the EU.

In Germany we have the biggest restrictions of fundamental rights since the existence of the federal republic of Germany.

We are all on indefinite house arrest. Millions of people are not allowed to work.

And the constitutional court does not even want to hear cases objecting to this. They will make a decision in 1 or 2 years when it has become irrelevant.

So it seems we don't have any fundamental rights at all. So spare me the outrage about Hungary.

Ah, you are one of those fundamentalists... Yeah, there is also a pandemic going on, look at us here in Sweden how well it works to leave to personal responsibility and self risk assessment to follow health guidelines.

Ok, I'll explain the difference. The lockdown in Germany overwhelmingly has the support of the population. If this was not the case, you would expect to see the politicians and parties that instigated the lockdowns severely punished for it in upcoming elections, but that won't happen. It's not a significant issue in the elections. Once the pandemic passes, the restrictions will be lifted. No permanent changes to the fundamental constitutions of Germany have been enacted using emergency laws justified under the pandemic, and if there were they'd still be subject to judicial review and accountability to the electorate. None of that has changed.

I will freely admit Orban does have a lot of support in Hungary, but he has used that to erase the country's judicial constitutional history, not just influence one judicial appointment nut utterly stack the entire judicial system, institute permanent constitutional changes under emergency powers, ruthlessly suppress independent journalism and undermine the entire electoral process in Hungary. He's not even coy about it, he just flat out says that's what he's doing.

There is no level of equivalence, which I'm sure you are completely aware of and fully understand, but this weaselly whataboutism is very tiring. If you actually support what he's doing, just be honest about it and say so, and tell us why.

> The lockdown in Germany overwhelmingly has the support of the population.

Fundamental rights are not supposed to be subject to majority approval. I might be in the minority, but I would still like to leave my house after 22:00 without risking arrest.

But this discussion is pointless.

If you seriously believe that e.g. what is being done to Julian Assange has anything to do with an independent judicial system, there is nothing to discuss.

This discussion is pointless because you keep talking at people and not to people, and talking over the argumentation to soapbox your own thoughts instead of engaging with the arguments. Then it isn't a discussion, it's you trying to find a good soapbox to do an exposé of your opinions, it's fucking tiring.

Stacking the court with appointees? Something the US will never do.

Hungary (and Poland) have been quite clever in how they undermine freedom: almost every individual thing they've done can be justified in isolation by saying, "Look, countries X, Y and Z do the same thing!", but when you look at all those things together and look at how they interact you realise that the situation is really quite bad there - even compared to the USA! Or that's my understanding of the situation; I'm not really an expert in the constitutional law of central European countries.

You can be an authoritative regime and still hate Russia and its puppets with passion for what atrocities they did in last century (1956 for Hungary, less but still bloody 1968 for Czechoslovakia).

How great to have a choice of authoritarian regimes!

I don't see how that's related to the conversation at hand. How did Russia get in the conversation?

> removed separation of powers,

This has become de facto meaningless in most of the EU countries as European law is over-writing local laws, in effect making the local (i.e. national) separation of powers meaningless. The German Constitutional Court is trying to fight this [1] but I think it's a losing battle, it's either accept the inevitable (meaning European law supersedes local law) or go the Brexit way.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ecb-policy-germany-eu-ana...

Good thing the parent did not said that. What he said was that these countries are "not shy to touch on the freedoms of their population" and that they dont like when someone in EU points that out.

Poland has been supporting the Belarusian opposition. Some rudimentary information has made it on Wikipedia, cf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belarus%E2%80%93Poland_relatio...

Dont forget that most of the protesters were actually hired by Polish government /s

Orban just privatized all universities and preparing to privatize all available houses (robbed 10s of billions of dollars from the public), and people are really pissed even though they are still afraid to go on the streets. Orban went too far, and now he started to play a bit nicer.

Poland is directly affected, as the FR4978 with Pratasievič on board was a SP-RSM belonging to Ryanair Sun and registered in Poland.

Yes, and Pratasievič was granted political asylum in Poland.

Actually, this information is wrong, sorry. His status is unclear to me and various sources report different things on this.

It was Polish plane that was kidnapped (still Ryanair but registered in Poland) which also doesn't help ;)

It appears you have subscribed to overly-simplistic tribal political rhetoric regarding Poland and Hungary, which is far from constructive.

PiS right now needs some wins. They have consistently screwed up and their avid fans are even sick of it.

> I am surprised Hungary agreed.

To quote the Economist,

> If Mr Orban ever does hit an obstacle, he surrenders some gains, while keeping the bulk of them. (The Hungarian leader even has a name for this legal waltz: the peacock dance.)

Orbán have vetoed a number of EU resolutions recently, most importantly one condemning China over Hong Kong. He probably coordinated with Mr Putin and they agreed Lukashenko can be fed to the dogs for all they care and so Orbán now loses Lukashenko but keeps Russia and China.

Putin plays the game well too: he quite probably approved of Lukashenko doing this, expecting a backlash against Belarus for it but not against Russia, so truly what does he care really? Belarus is an ally for now but meh. If he would've vetoed Lukashenko's batshit crazy idea it would've strained the relationship so why would he? It's not like EU sanctions will immediately topple Lukashenko.

On the contrary Putin probably cheered him on knowing that some outcome like this was likely.

Apparently Lukashenko has been playing a bit of chicken with Putin at times saying "Maybe I should be friendly with the EU instead?", now they both know that Luk is in Putins hands without even needing to say a single word.

Just because a country has an authoritarian government, doesn't mean it supports other authoritarian governments.

Isn't blaming a government for being authoritarian whilst being authoritarian alike shooting yourself in the foot?

Kind of. But if you own state media you can portray yourself as a "glorious leader", while others as "dangerous dictators".

Yes, Poland is such an unfree country that the journalist that Belarus arrested had willingly applied for (and received) asylum status in Poland.

I don't get how people still put Poland (and Hungary) on the same level with Belarus or China. Both are democratic nations with just a right wing leadership and political system. And european right wing is more left wing than the Democrats in the US in many social policies.

Poland isn't Northkorea or China, despite how the media likes to portray them so. They are way more democratic than the last Trump administration, even if that doesn't mean much to be honest.

Poland, and Hungary even worse, are trending authoritarian/undemocratic. There is still a very long way to go before they even begin to approach totalitarian dictatorships like Belarus or China (or even Russia).

But to me Poland and Hungary are more immediately worrying because they are EU countries and they only very recently took a turn for less independent courts, less free media and so on. There is still time to change course there, while in Belarus there isn't.

Alliance of Democracies Foundation's yearly Democracy Perception Index from 2021[0] had 77% Chinese people seeing their country as having "just the right amount of democracy"[1], which is the exact same percentage as they found in Denmark so it really isn't as simple as that. It also isn't about Right Vs. Left because on a simple left-right axis the US is located further to the right than Saudi Arabia and Hitler[2] and however you see US politics it isn't comparable to Nazism. You need to include more than just left right to get a reasonably useable result.

I'm neither agreeing or disagreeing with your point of view here just saying that when "just the right amount of democracy" can differ so much that #7 on Most democratic countries in the world[3] and #157 on the list agree they have the right amount of democracy then it isn't a surprise that countries that might differ a lot are seen as comparable by some and not others.

0: https://www.allianceofdemocracies.org/initiatives/the-copenh...

1: Alliance of Democracies Foundation is chaired by former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. This isn't just some cranks rating China based on scared citizens not daring to say otherwise.

2: Obama is pretty close to Hitler on a left-right-only axis but Trump, Bush, etc. are far to the right of Hitler. It is a broken comparison outside of local politics.

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

Hungary, yes. Poland I think is less surprising. It's been mostly Hungary that has had the reservations recently about other countries' inner affairs recently.

Poland is nationalistic and Catholic, but also very anti-Russian. They are not friends with Lukashenko and Putin.

Hungary is kind of Putin's friend, yeah.

Unfortunately, the real losers of this situation will be the Belarusian people, many of whom have immigrated to nearby countries like Poland or Germany. They will now (probably) be unable to visit family members easily, as flights will have to reroute through Istanbul or Russia.

Pretty much the same situation with Iran. Actions intended to punish an unjust government mostly just hurt their citizens.

It's group guilt and punishment, a dehumanizing practice that ignores personal circumstances and is OK with collateral damage. A blunt tool.

What would you suggest? Nothing, since economic sanctions have the same issue? "Humane" poisonings of involved politicians using exotic isotopes and/or nerve agents? Airstrikes and betting on Putin folding?

Such tyranny exist because people allow it. Do you think nations should not bear responsibility for _their_ governments?

By that logic, millions of people from dozens of countries in the Middle East and Africa should be punished for the actions of their government.

Exactly how does that help anyone?

Do you also think it's a problem to fine companies when they do bad things?

So we should ban all flights from certain countries in Africa and the Middle East because they have authoritarian governments? And we should do so until the people there violently overthrow their government?

Opinions like this only seem to come from Westerners who will never have to face the consequences of such actions. Geopolitics is complicated and as my original comment said, regular people are usually the ones getting hurt.

I didn't say this particular action was justified, I just think the "collective punishment" reason not to do it is a terrible idea that would make it impossible to take action against any organization ever. It's really a stretch to call something like this collective punishment.

If a government does anything there are regular people that are going to get hurt, but that's not a reason to stop governing.

Poland isn't that far from Belarus (they are direct neighbours). People travel overland between those two, it is also quite a bit cheaper.

Even Czech Belarussians tend to take the bus back home.

It is going to be worse for expats in France or Britain, though.

I doubt that the land borders will remain open and easy to traverse. It’s likely that this is the beginning of an escalation on both sides.

Beyond that, Poland may be bordering Belarus, but Poland is a huge country. Berlin to Minsk is 1,100 km, a 12-13 hour bus ride at minimum. Add a 2-3 hour wait at the border to be realistic. This all adds up to a much longer trip than a 1-2 hour flight. Especially for immigrants that are probably visiting home for a weekend trip and can’t afford to waste 3 days just on traveling.

I know. Pre-war Czechoslovakia was a long noodle and people from Carpathian Ruthenia (a region annexed by the USSR in 1945 and attached to Ukrainian SSR) still come to Prague to work. They usually take buses from Uzhhorod to Prague (750 km), the journey lasts about 13 hours.

Yeah, no one does a weekend hop to family and back under such conditions. Visits are monthly.

Warsaw to Minsk buses take about 12 hours too. But the ticket is cheap, about 20 eur. I don't think you can buy an air ticket under 100 eur. Perhaps even much more (150-200).

Given that a lot of the people work for peanuts, they choose the far cheaper option even if it means a much longer and uncomfortable journey.

I agree that many people that didn't have a say in this will be affected. Do you have any suggestions on better measures that the EU could have taken? Or should the EU have taken no measures at all?

No, they definitely should take some measures. Put stronger sanctions on those involved with the government, incentivize more immigration outside of Belarus, similar things.

Banning Belarusian airlines will only affect regular people. Those in the government don't rely on public airlines anyway.

I'm fairly sure Lukashenko/Putin was expecting (possibly even counting on) some kind of reaction. This has Putin's fingerprints all over it, actually.

He set up a kind of win/win situation. Sanctions have a habit of backfiring at the best of times, and he's set up a situation where the hypocrisy of the EU/US can be hammered home in domestic propaganda with persistent comparisons to Morales/Snowden incident. It'll be hard for pro western Belarussian politicians/journalists to effectively rebut these.

Meanwhile they can gently guide Belarussians into going on holiday in Russia where they might have gone to Europe if flights are banned. Isolating them this way would be a feature, not a bug.

If, on the other hand, the EU/US just sanction a few individuals they look weak and Lukashenko looks strong.

It's quite the pickle.

Of course he did. It just got a lot harder for Belarusians to come to the West / Westerners to visit Belarus. You can now expect Belarus to cancel its 30 days visa-free entrance program, which requires that visitors entered the country through the airport.

The actions by the EU only help Putin and Lukashenko.

Target the elite instead of the people

The elite have already been forbidden from entering or doing business with the EU since November.

Then go after their offshores. Then start targeting their ties inside russian elite

> Then go after their offshores.

What, specifically, does this mean? The EU sanctions, idk, the Bahamas? Who? And how?

I mean seize illegally earned money and/or forbid them and their families spending those money in the EU and other friendly jurisdictions. EU as a whole should have enough weight to make it happen if enough political will is present.

They are already forbidden to conduct any business, i.e. spend any money, in the EU.

To literally "seize" the money stored in an offshore bank account is difficult unless the EU is also willing to march an army into those countries.

> Then go after their offshores.

Nobody ever touches offshore havens since rich people from everywhere have money there.

It took 9/11 for Switzerland to not laugh at law enforcement request from other countries. (Probably still laughs to anyone thats not US and maybe EU)

This is not entirely true. Even the elite who were included in the sanction lists (Russian) are regularly noticed in the EU countries. They can come to rest through diplomatic channels or through bribes. Also children of people under sanctions live mainly in EU or the USA. While they are investing in those countries, they are not asked questions about the origin of the money

How people are going to take responsibility if they are not going to feel consequences? Are they ever going to sort out their mess?

"Until you start a violent civil war to overthrow your government, we're going to make you, average citizen of Belarus, have a more difficult life."

That's effectively what happens. The problem with thee Russian border states is that the hope for strong external intervention isn't very high. But the closeness to russia is why the Annexation of Crimea ad the regime of Lukashenko and a few other dictators still exist.

To some extent you can target the elite and decisionmakers. But after a very short while, there is no easy way to separate "people" from the elite. Targeting businesses, exports and so on which is the next step - is always going to make the average citizen worse. But the argument works both ways: ensuring the wellbeing of the people helps the legitimacy and strength of the regime. I don't think anyone thinks it's a good idea to stop short of anything that makes the life of average belorussians worse.

I wasn't sure how big Belarusian airlines was, but their summer 2021 timetable shows a number of flights to Europe:

https://en.belavia.by/webroot/delivery/files/TimeTable_en_s2...

They appear to have 30 planes split between Boeing and Embraer:

https://en.belavia.by/company/air_fleet/

According to their website they're already cancelling flights and apparently their customer support is overloaded with calls right now.

So there's that.

A lot of planes fly Belarus - Egypt, which means flying through Greek/Cyprus airspace.

Will be interesting if Ukraine and/or Turkey responds, as flights from Belarus to Istanbul would be effected too. Ukraine (and Turkey) are part of Eurocontrol, but not part of the EU.

Obviously Belarus will still be flying east to Russia

Ukraine just announced they are stopping all air traffic with Belarus from tomorrow on.

Sanctions appear tough but will isolate the Belarusian people even more.

The EU could up their game by recognizing the democratically elected Belarusian individuals as the rightful government in exile, and propose to kick-start EU integration talks with them. That would send a strong support message to the Belarusian people.

> Sanctions appear tough but will isolate the Belarusian people even more.

Dictators only caring about themselves and isolating their own people even more than before? Color me surprised.

> The EU could up their game by recognizing the democratically elected Belarusian individuals as the rightful government in exile

Unlikely to happen, the EU has a strong history of not getting involved in the democratic process no matter how ugly it gets. Look at the "reaction" (or rather lack of reaction) from various referendums in EU countries and also abroad, and you'll see their default stance when it comes to "helping spread democracy".

I think they carefully try to avoid ending up in the same position of the US, who has meddled in so many elections worldwide that it's hard to even keep track of them anymore.

I don’t understand how any of this stuff is even ok.

If any random person had done this, the police would be after them to arrest them for kidnapping, but because it’s a nation state doing this the only thing that happens is closed airspace?

I feel like there should be something we can do that wouldn’t be a slap on the wrist.

Welcome to the real world. Geopolitics are...complicated.

It's not. Lukashenko is bankrolled by Putin. You react too aggressively to Lukashenko and you're not just taking on Belarus, you're taking on Russia. Then Russia starts throttling gas supplies to Europe and so on and so on. As the sibling comment says, geopolitics are complicated.

I think it’s really simple.

It’s like walking away from the bully because you don’t like to fight (or are afraid you’ll get hurt), they’ll just do it again next time since the only thing that was reinforced was that there are no consequences.

It’s just larger in scale.

It's not okay, but international relations are not like personal relations. There is no police force to arrest the guilty. It's really the law of the jungle with a few marginal-to-non-enforceable 'laws' sprinkled on top.

Because this is a state actor, you can't just send the police after them: they have fighter jets (and it was a fighter jet that grounded the plane). You have to ask whether you're willing to go to war, or impose collective punishment on the people of Belarus via something like sanctions. The EU has already taken diplomatic steps for previous offenses like barring Lukashenko personally from the EU, and the US has banned loans to the Belarussian government in the past as well — and those bans remain in place today.

There are probably more diplomatic levers to pull, but TBH none of the existing ones have seemed to do anything. States are okay at enforcing laws within their borders without massive death or total economic destruction, but don't seem to be very effective at enforcing much inside of someone else's borders barring those options.

Boots on the ground as the Americans like to say.

Feel free to volunteer for the front line, most of us Europeans don't quite care that much.

>but because it’s a nation state doing this the only thing that happens is closed airspace?

I am not going into specifics so not to derail the topic, however there are countries that kidnap people and consistently get away with it. It's all about power and alliances.

So don't compare this to a random person, but to other countries.

> I feel like there should be something we can do that wouldn’t be a slap on the wrist.

Like what? Belarus is a sovereign state, they can do whatever they want in their soil and no one has any authority to enforce anything on them.

The part of TFA that seems to be glossed over in the comments here is that Belarus released a video in the last 12 hours of him confessing to "crimes", which was presumably extracted under physical duress.

His girlfriend was arrested together with him, it's not hard to imagine a way to pressure him into confessing.

i think what is not quite understood is the show aspect of the whole story: the secret services of Belarus (and probably allied Russia as well) are trying to awe the population of their countries into obedience by setting an example: 'look, we can do everything'. Interesting that this is exactly the behavior that one would see from some street gang, it's not what one would expect from a state.

interesting detail: some civil rights activists in Russia are taking this as an open threat: https://gulagu.net/news/2021-05-24-746.html The gulagu.net project is stopping all activities inside Russia for fear of reprisals, since "the capture and arrest of Protasevich is bearing witness of the fact that Lukashenko and Putin are now no longer even trying to hide anything, and that they are ready to act out open reprisals against those they disapprove of. ... We understand that no limitations exist any more and that the secret services are literally ready to do everything."

"... с целью захвата и ареста Протасевича свидетельствует о том, что Лукашенко и Путин теперь уже даже не скрывают ничего и готовы действовать открыто с целью организации расправы с неугодными ... Мы понимаем, что более никаких ограничений не существует и спецура готова в буквальном смысле на всё."

i have the feeling that this will be a good test case; someone is trying to test the resolve and responses of the European Union. Interesting what will happen next (in other words: someone might be doing some integration testing here).

Is there such a thing as flags of convenience for planes?

EU planes can still fly there and back to the EU.

>> At a meeting in Brussels, the leaders of the 27 member states also told EU airlines not to fly over Belarus, and promised further economic sanctions.

They told them to, but airlines are free to do whatever they want.

Obviously, the next step is to make it illegal to fly over Belarus.

Or prosecute airlines for endangering pasengers by doing this.

Or refuse to approve any flights with flightpath in Belarusian airspace.

Air France, Lufthansa, airBaltic & SAS already said they would not fly over belarus anymore

Ryanair however flew over the very next day

And Dutch KLM (the other half of Air France) happily announced they would continue to fly over Belarus, but they changed their tune after a sharp condemnation from our prime minister.

Possibly, I think it will depend on how individual countries implement the directive.

I think irrespective of that if airlines ignore such a directive then they'll be exposing themselves to a significant amount of liability if something happens again (i.e. the airline will be made to pay out damages and their insurance probably won't cover it).

Sure, but since the EU nor the companies within is trying to emulate the Great Land of Freedom, companies won't fly there if most of the EU leaders just agreed that they shouldn't. The risk of going against recommended action and getting penalties themselves is much higher than any potential benefits of continue doing it.

not to fly over Belarus != not to fly to Belarus

true, tho it's rather hard to fly to Belarus without flying over it as well

Yes. That plane was registered in Poland.

It feels like the ban hits ordinary citizens more. The rich and the powerful (including politicians) won’t be affected as much. :(

Irritate citizens enough and they will start revolting. Tho life there is bad enough that they ain't got time for that when your instinct calls for survival.

> Irritate citizens enough and they will start revolting.

Like in Cuba?

I don’t know, I don’t buy the “let’s make people suffer so that they’ll revolt” logic. I don’t think that EU should make Belarus citizens suffer.

And ideally there should be better internationally-sanctioned ways to replace disfunctional governments and (what’s more important) institutions.

Know better way? Let me know if the comments!

I think that Giedroyc Doctrine is worth mentioning here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giedroyc_Doctrine

I suppose they'll be banning us airlines too for forcing the Bolivian PMs plane to land in Vienna when looking for Snowden?

One might, briefly, struggle with this question:

Can a cabal of morally bankrupt bribe-takers wielding selective-outrage-justice weapons against own citizens (Marine Le Pen, Trump, and their supporters)

be scolding another, less-presentable Dictator?

And the Obama admin behavior [1] with the attempted Snowden plane intercept, is not much different either, I agree..

[1] https://www.france24.com/en/20130703-bolivia-president-evo-m...

That statement from Joe Biden really irks me, given the treatment of whistle blowers, most famously Edward Snowden, during his last administration.

Yes, that will show em

What do you suggest instead?

Wonder what the geo-political consequences could be. What if Big Brother Putin now says all EU planes are banned from flying over Russia.

Or what if Russian ATC are ordered to route planes flying from the east to Belarussian airspace. Of course there's probably a bit of freedom to choose routes by pilots, but if I were Putin I'd just say (or tell my ATC to say): "those routes are closed because of military training, your only available route is here through Belarussia"

I think Russia charges a lot of money for planes to fly over their airspace to extract as much money as possible.

I doubt they'll do this as they make a lot of money from this.

> What if Big Brother Putin now says all EU planes are banned from flying over Russia

For what gain?

He's been described as a very petty man. For the gain of maybe a move that inconveniences all the EU airlines enough that they'll lobby their governments to not implement this ban. An EU climbdown would be a delicious victory for him. But the way politics work, nobody ever climbs down anything.

Putin has lots of issues, but he's way more pragmatic than that.

> Wonder what the geo-political consequences could be. What if Big Brother Putin now says all EU planes are banned from flying over Russia.

Well, who would really lose out if the EU and the US were to retaliate with the same action? Russia, or EU+US? I would wager the latter would revert to the transpolar routes of the cold war, while the former would be almost entirely shut out of its most lucrative markets. No way Putin would do this.

Politically convenient amnesia is on full display again: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/24/opinion/belarus-plane-pro...

The US pressured Austria to do the same - for a head of state's airplane - while looking for Snowden.

It's not whataboutism - both are abuses of power, but the sanctimony is just unbearable.

Yeah, but at least this have one minor difference: in Austria it was a government plane, lukashenka hijacked a civil plane.

May lose access due to lost password - if so will continue as Sporktacular2

So, now every Belarusian who didn't agree with the regime and wanted to leave the country will be stuck there.

The purpose of sanctions is to torture the civilian population until they are willing to tacitly support the revolution you're trying to foment.

There were peaceful mass protests every day since August, with millions of participants in some days. It didn’t help. Local police and state security tracks, jails and tortures the protest leaders and journalists. Or do you want a violent revolution instead?

Wouldn't they be able to cross the boarder into Lithuania by land?

Nope. There are border controls.

transit via Moscow airport?

As a european (german) I can say, that this is mostly just show. Why?

For once, only Belarus Airline will be suspended to fly in the EU. The other european airlines will still fly to and over Belarus, giving them money. For example, Lufthansa still wants to fly to Belarus and doesn't seem to care at all about solidarity with other european airlines.

Money talks louder. And then people who don't have the time to research often don't know that Belarus is a important economical partner for german firms. The trade with Germany makes up around 5% of the GDP of Belarus and many german firms are (in)directly supporting Lukaschenko and his regime. It just isn't really known to the public.

Therefor, if Germany really wanted it, big and impactful sanctions would easily be possible. The airline banning isn't really meaningful to Lukaschenko at all, they will rebrand the airline and fly from Moscow as Russia is their most important ally.

And the thing is, that Germany still has the same problems with other trade partners. Germany still sells weapons to Turkey, Saudi-Arabia or Azerbaijan. Even if this countries did work or are currently working against european partners and neighbours. Even if these countries are violating human rights. A subject that Germany likes to teach to other european countries.

Germany has the problem, that their economy is really connected and dependent on states that are violating human rights, are working and fighting against EU member states and are even starting to dictate german firms what they can and should do to be able to do their business (Belarus, Saudi-Arabia, Azerbaijan). It's levels above the USA and worse. One of the biggest firm in Germany, VW, is cooperating with Chinas ethnical cleansing and using Uyghurs working force as cheap labour. This or they just coincidentally build their new factories just hundreds of meters away from the concentration camps and Uyghurs are just coincidentally walking from the factory to the concentration camp.

Turkey is still part of NATO. It would be a bit strange if NATO partners are supposed to defend one another but can't sell each other weapons :) Agree re. Saudi Arabia though. I'm surprised they still do that after Khasoggi.

I also agree that NATO members should sell and exchange knowledge. But Turkey is acting more and more hostile, also working against US interests and even against the interests of Greece, a important EU member state. That's why the US will open now new military bases in Greece.

I just wanted to show, that Germany tries to sell and make profits from both sites. And this will be a problem in the future, if parts of your economy are depending on, what someone would call, hostile states to western interests. It's already now a problem with the EU-Russia political conflict, where Germany is the main reason for the passivity of the EU regarding Russia and their aggressivity against eastern european nations. Also a reason why Poland trusts the USA way more on this topic than Germany or Western Europe.

But how often do Lukashenko and his circle actually fly out of Belarus anyway? He already had no problem with closing his own borders before anyway, so it's not like this is going to seem like a strong move to him and it only really hurts the Belarusian people.

They sanctioned individuals involved in the decision too. And at some point, the Belarusian people will have to take responsibility for their leaders. I'm not saying it should happen today or that they should start a civil war, but they should think about ways to change.

You should read up on the opposition movement in Belarus before making such insensitive suggestions. Dissidents are regularly arrested, beaten and even raped, yet many turn out week after week to protest. Consider if you'd be brave enough to do what they already do first.

Dictators never rule alone, even though they suck all the attention. They have supporters and enablers. For example, a pilot of that MiG-29 fighter jet could blow a passenger plane if ordered so. Their police killed and tortured people that were on mass protests. Lukashenko doesn't have exclusive responsibility over this.

> Their police killed and tortured people that were on mass protests.

And someone who beat and raped peaceful protesters just a month ago may walk by you in Venice beach, holding ice cream in one hand and leading his daughter with the other. And maybe he even has an older son or daughter who goes to UCLA or Stanford on the money he's pillaged. That's really common.

Current sanctions target only the very top, but violent regimes have layers and layers of collaborators and their family members who come to the west to enjoy freedoms they deprive others of in their country. This should have much more focus. Let them be confined to the environment they create.

> But how often do Lukashenko and his circle actually fly out of Belarus anyway

If you are a Belorusian elite with kids in US and UK schools, money in Switzerland etc, living comfortably so long as Lukashenko is president. Then suddenly your assets are frozen, and your children can't travel to London when their next semester in the very expensive school starts. All because Lukashenko had to discipline some kid. You aren't going to be happy about that little stunt, and Lukashenko will be told.

That strategy has, I think, never worked in the history of dictatorships. It probably won't start working now.

It at least has a very low cost so even if it has marginal success it seems like an easy call.

However, it can’t stop there. In this case, unfortunately, it has to get worse before it gets better for the average citizen in Belarus.

I used to agree. These days I don't. I find it very harsh and unsympathetic to use a strategy that can be summed up as, "we will make your life as shit as possible in the hope that despite having no access to military power you nonetheless start a civil war in which you will probably die without achieving anything, and if you don't, you just won a civil war so your whole country is destroyed and lots of people hate you for it".

If the west is serious about taking down foreign dictators it needs to man up and start assassinating them, either with hit squads or drone strikes. No pussyfooting around and hiding behind the hope that locals will get the blood on their hands so the foreign bureaucrats don't have to. And if the EU isn't willing to do that, then it should be trying to do what it can to make life better for the Belarusians, just like a doctor would try to help a sick patient even if they spent a lifetime smoking and thus in some way might have some culpability for it.

Whom they are punishing? Elites use private jets and will just laugh at that. Regular Belarusians will have difficulties, yes.

I guess that's up to who is interpreting the conclusion (https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2021...)

It says:

> calls on the Council to adopt the necessary measures to ban overflight of EU airspace by Belarusian airlines and prevent access to EU airports of flights operated by such airlines;

Now I don't know how private jets usually works, but isn't there some company responsible for the flight itself? Every plane in existence needs to file a flight plan, and I presume that if the flights origin is from Belarus and owned by a Belarus entity, they'll get denied to enter the other airways west/north to Belarus.

So in the worst case they’ll use Lufthansa or Emirates? Okay.

Not sure how Emirates are relevant, that airline is from the UAB so can't really control their actions exactly.

But when it comes to Lufthansa (since they are German), seems unlikely they'll be able to use Lufthansa as using the airspace of Belarus was just advised against...

From the same link as before (give it a read: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2021...)

> calls on all EU-based carriers to avoid overflight of Belarus

It doesn't matter, they’ll use private jets.

You are trying to argue with the little details and missing the whole point.

And it's the ONLY response from EU leaders. Pathetic cowards. Lukashenko now got confirmation that such actions will not be punished.

> It doesn't matter, they’ll use private jets.

Closed airspace means closed airspace. That's not only applicable for commercial flights.

If that's the case, this is a good thing: common people can still use Lufthansa (although Lufthansa might stop having flights there) or Emirates.

Elites, however, can't use private jets to fly to Europe anymore.

Belavia also seems to belong to the state, so as long as we still have Lufthansa and Emirates, it's hurting the state more than hurting the general population.

And what stops elites from using Emirates? Or any other company, the name doesn't matter here.

What's your point? That Emirates should also stop flying there in order to inconvenience the elites? That would hurt the population way more than rich people, and EU has no such power.

I'll quote from my other comment in this branch:

It will not hurt the elites. In the most worst case (if every EU airline will decide to not serve Belarusians), they’ll fly to Russia first and use some russian plane. Or just will use a car - what a tragedy, lol. And it's the ONLY response from EU leaders. Pathetic cowards. Lukashenko now got confirmation that such actions will not be punished.

EU gets to appear "tough" while, unfortunately, this is only going to hurt people of Belarus. This is only going to help Lukashenko's narrative that the West is plotting against Belarus.

Most people are not stupid, they understand the situation. Also most of the people do not believe Lukashenko's narratives any more. At this point is not about him convincing his people to believe him, it's about using force to remove those who are brave enough to fight him - this is actually what this kidnapping was about.

What would the alternative be? Do nothing?

Spend money on a BBC Belarusian comedy channel... Hehe..

Broadcast from neighbouring countries.

It's probably not very rational, but it would be fun :)

There's already a BBC News Russian service: https://www.bbc.com/russian / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_News_Russian

Sanction the elite

They are already sanctioned.

This is how sanctions usually work. The leaders of the country should be representing interests of the people.

> This is only going to help Lukashenko's narrative that the West is plotting against Belarus.

This narrative only works short-term. Sooner or later people realize it is not what is happening no matter how much propaganda is being produced.

I live in Russia, the situation here is not as bad as Belarus (yet), but has similarities nontheless. The sad thing is that almost 50% of the population still believes Putin, and the reason is propaganda, the main point of propaganda - that Russia is a fortress surrounded by enemies, anything bad you hear about the government is foreign agents trying to descredit him.

Lukashenko already has much less than 50% support of the ppl and he has lost his last elections. But he holds the power by force. What do you want Belorussians to do, go and die fighting the police?

> What do you want Belorussians to do, go and die fighting the police?

I mean it sucks like hell, but this is how most countries (and most oppressed minority groups within most countries) did it. Do you think it would be better if the EU took the US approach and rolled in their own armies? That doesn't have a good record of working either.

No, I don't want any foreign army in the Belarus obviously. My point is that Lukashenko already lost support of majority of Belorussians, so making life worse for common people does nothing except it produces unnecessary misery.

I agree that taking down the government by force is probably the only option left now for them. Belorussians are people who already were unfortunate enough to be born in post soviet dictatorship, yet a lot of overly privileged people in USA and EU have this sentiment that being ruled by Luka is fault of the people, completely ignoring the circumstances like Belarus being in the sphere of influence of Russia.

I mean all westerners have to do to shape the government is to attend elections, but it's not the same in dictatorships. The expectation that young people have to die fighting the regime instead of enjoying their youth like people in the West is very unfair.

Glenn Greenwald's latest piece on this:

> What Belarus did, while illegal, is not unprecedented. The dangerous tactic was pioneered by the same U.S. and E.U. officials now righteously condemning it.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/as-anger-toward-belarus-mou...

I don’t think the equivalence really holds:

“while flying over Austria ... they were told by France, Spain and Italy that their permission to fly over those countries’ air space had been rescinded”

Glenn Greenwald has just gone a bit funny these days. When he's not repeating propaganda straight out of RT (like this), he's minimising the crimes committed on 6 January.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/as-the-insurrection-narrati...

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-false-and-exaggerated-c...

https://www.rt.com/russia/524731-belarus-ryanair-similar-inc...

I think he’s been a fascist all along. Same with Wikileaks, which was never neutral.

There is a need for a neutral leak platform, preferably one that takes humans entirely out of the loop and therefore removes all possibility of bias or strategic timing of releases. Maybe something involving cryptographic time locks?

While Assange is a problematic character ultimately the problem isn’t him so much as the presence of any secretive cabal of humans in that position.

What an arbitrary sanction. What do Belarusian airlines have to do with any of this?

The only value of picking airlines over anything else must be of symbolic nature. Unless maybe you see it as "balancing the competition" if other airlines loose the flights to belarus and have to use more fuel avoiding the airspace.

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