DISINFO: The goal of the “Ryanairgate” is to sabotage the Minsk agreements and attack Russia
SUMMARY
Attacking Russia and sabotaging the Minsk agreements would be the goal of the new escalation of Western sanctions towards a country that doesn’t yield to its interests. With the emergency landing of the Ryanair flight, the West found a fertile ground to attack Belarus with its agenda. After the failure of last year’s revolts in Belarus, which aimed to have an identical outcome to the one that took place in Ukraine six years before, that is to say, a coup and a US and EU puppet government, the West uses any opportunity to continue putting pressure on Alexander Lukashenko and to corner Russia.
Lukashenko asks why the captain decided to land in Minsk when there were only 70 kilometres left and why no other country wanted to receive the plane when Belarus warned about the explosives on the flight, and hints that perhaps they needed the flight to land in Minsk. This last question makes sense after French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian declares that by not condemning the Belarusian action, Moscow is backing its Slavic neighbour. Kyiv has been wanting for a long time to put an end to the Minsk agreements and make others tailored for itself, and it seems that this gives a new excuse to Paris and Berlin to side with Ukraine. The final goal is to expand NATO borders.
RESPONSE
Disinformation about the arrest of Belarusian journalist Raman Pratasevich at the Minsk airport after the forced landing of the flight on board of which he was travelling from Athens to Vilnius.
This disinformation story mixes several recurring pro-Kremlin baseless narratives about an aggressive West and NATO, about Russia as the ultimate victim of international events, and about popular protests in Belarus and Ukraine as “colour revolutions” orchestrated by the West. The goal of these narratives is to deflect and discredit any criticism or rejection of the illicit actions of Moscow and its allies.
Contrary to the claims made by Alyaksandr Lukashenka and repeated in this disinformation story, the Ryanair captain didn’t decide by himself to land in Minsk but was ordered to do so by Minsk air controllers, backed by the threat of a Belarusian Mig-29 aircraft. The alleged bomb threat that Belarusian authorities hoisted as the reason for this forced landing turned out to be a fake. The whole incident has been deemed as a serious breach of international aviation law and denounced as an act of “piracy” and “state-sponsored hijacking” by Ryanair.
The EU condemned Belarusian action against civil plane and the detention of Pratasevich. In a declaration on behalf of the EU on the forced diversion of Ryanair flight FR4978 to Minsk on 23 May 2021, the High Representative called for the immediate release of Mr Pratasevich. This was followed by a European Council statement, in which the EU leaders called for targeted individual and economic sanctions as well as to ban overflight of EU airspace by Belarusian airlines and prevent access to EU airports of flights operated by these.
See other examples in our database, such as claims that Belarus acted in strict accordance with international law in the Ryanair incident, that Hamas sent an email to Minsk airport, that the security service of Ukraine could have set up the incident to harm Belarus, that Raman Pratasevich is a professional media extremist, or that the Ryanair case is similar to the forced landing of Evo Morales’s plane.