At the weekend, a Ryanair flight between Greece and Lithuania was diverted to Belarus in order to arrest a journalist. Belarus claimed it received a bomb hazard because of this flight, blaming the diversion. However, it is pretty clear that the Belarusian government essentially hijacked the flight to apprehend an enemy. Belarus has received a tremendous backlash from the international community for this, so the government has done everything in its power to justify what happened, including blatant lies, including blaming Hamas. The Belarusian government has now released the ATC audio of the incident. The government also claims that a fighter jet was only deployed after the Ryanair pilots made the decision to divert to Belarus. It is worth noting, however, that this ATC audio has not been verified by a third party, nor has the history of when the fighter jet was deployed. Here is the audio, as reported by Reuters:
This transcript sounds reasonable enough most of the time, which does not mean that some things may not have been left out, but that it does not sound out entirely. The Belarusian authorities also claim they tried to contact Ryanair’s Lithuania office by phone but were unable to contact anyone. That sounds believable too. ? Even so, this story is still complete nonsense:
Bottom lineIt seems to me that Belarus thought it could arrest a foreign journalist and let him fly under the radar, but the government is clearly getting a lot more backlash than expected. It is interesting to see how the Belarusian government tries to back up its story, from being guilty of Hamas to the publication of the alleged minutes of the discussion between pilots and air traffic controllers. I’m curious what justification comes next … Via https://globalconnekt.com/transcript-between-belarusian-atc-and-ryanair-pilots/
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