The United States will sanction Belarus friday for the forced hijacking of a Ryanair advertising flight and the arrest of dissident journalist Roman Protasevich, who was a passenger on the plane. Several other governments also rebuked Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and his regime in the wake of the incident. Putin.
The interception of Ryanair’s flight indicated that Lukashenko, who, before arresting Protasevich, spent months suppressing protests opposed to his regime, was in a position to renounce any obvious link with the European Union, and his meeting with Putin did little to dispel that theory. . The two were filmed, in what has been described as a painfully forced (almost inaudible) public relations program, chatting jovially on Putin’s yacht near Sochi as they watched dolphins and ate with Lukashenko’s son.