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Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace

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Re: Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace

#101

Post by toyg »

V-2 wrote: post #63
ghostwriter wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm only pointing out these two incidents aren't quite in the same category. they are the same in motives and principles - in both cases a state pressure was applied to extract an undesirable to the regime citizen from a plane. Focusing on technicalities of the act doesn't resolve the issue with the nature of the act - the corrupt state acting as a bully to coerce its rightful citizen into submittance, with all ava…

"in both cases a state pressure was applied to extract an undesirable to the regime citizen from a plane" As I explained - in case of Snowden they would only have prevented him from getting to South America. They wouldn't have extracted him from the plane. If Snowden was on board, he'd simply be flown back to Russia - back to square one. An analogy in this case would be Belarus merely prohibiting the RyanAir flight f…

> in case of Snowden they would only have prevented him from getting to South America.

And you know this how, were you working for the Austrian government at the time, and were you a member of the team who searched the plane?

Chances are that they would have at minimum detained him and allowed the US to start extradition proceedings. Whether they would have eventually extradited him, is not certain; but they would not have searched the plane (and sent the Austrian President to talk directly with Morales) if they were not minded to detain him.

Re: Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace

#102

Post by notahacker »

sneak wrote: post #25
namdnay wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evo Morales' plane? From what I gathered it wasn't forced down in Austria, it's just that they were refused entry into the airspaces of several countries and the pilots weren't sure about the remaining fuel levels. Apparently the whole thing was a stunt by Julian Assange? Don't know how true that is Definitely a bit dodgy though

> that they were refused entry into the airspaces of several countries Countries that minutes earlier they were cleared to fly through, and had planned to fly through. Had they ignored the refusal and proceeded as planned? Same ending: fighter jets. Let’s not pretend here that this is different.

Clearance to fly through and clearance to make an emergency landing due to doubts about the fuel gauge (we have the cockpit audio discussing the latter...) are not the same thing.

If there was really a dastardly plot to capture the guy that wasn't even on the aircraft, they'd have gone for fighter jets, not "don't land in our country, land in the country you're flying over where a diplomat will be mildly undiplomatic towards you [or fly back to Russia completely unmolested]"

Re: Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace

#104

Post by mikro2nd »

mrweasel wrote: post #32
maratc wrote: post #8

This will likely have no consequences to the regime in Belarus, while increasing costs to these Baltic airlines. A policy that might achieve something would be if the Baltic states, together with Poland and Ukraine, would close their airspace to Belavia planes, until the detained passenger is delivered to his destination in Vilnius. This will increase costs to Belarusian airlines, which would be a problem to the regi…

>This will likely have no consequences to the regime in Belarus That's the problem with sanctions, at some point you run of of things to take away. From then on your target can pretty much do what ever they want, knowing that things can't really get any worse.

Not so. Sanctions can be devastatingly effective applied by a significant majority of the world over a length of time. Sanctions were the instrument that brought an end to the Apartheid regime in South Africa: sanctions, having brought the South African economy to its knees, were a key factor in forcing the ruling regime to the negotiating table.

Yes, in some fairytale world the ruling National Party could have continued "doing whatever they want". Here in reality things would certainly have got worse, and the National Party government could see that the end-game was inescapable. Sanctions worked then, and they'll work again.

Re: Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace

#105

Post by varjag »

_0w8t wrote: post #92
jcaldas wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lukashenko will not go down without a fight, and Russia is very unwilling to see a color revolution again next to its borders. Putin dreams of annexing Belarus. Couple this with the EU's overall weakness and fragmented interests (eg nordstream 2), and it's hard to imagine a good outcome. A few sanctions will come out of this that will make EU officials look good and further place Belarus into Russian hands (namely, a…

It is not that clear that Russia all that happy about the incident. A girlfriend of Roman Protasevich, who is a Russian citizen, was also detained and that already caused PR issues for Kremlin. Plus there is even comments from Russia’s Duma about how this can be damaging for Russia.

No, the head propagandists (RT's Simonyan, Solovyev) are ecstatic and can't stop congratulating KGB.

Re: Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace

#106

Post by proxysna »

jcaldas wrote: post #49
proxysna wrote: post #16

This affects me directly since i am working outside of Belarus now and rely on air travel to visit my family, still this feels like the only reasonable answer to KGB messing with airlines. I am expecting that most planes to Belarus, from EU are going to be cancelled and people will have to reroute their travel through Moscow. In general it is terrifying how far my country went down the path of turning into another Tu…

Lukashenko will not go down without a fight, and Russia is very unwilling to see a color revolution again next to its borders. Putin dreams of annexing Belarus. Couple this with the EU's overall weakness and fragmented interests (eg nordstream 2), and it's hard to imagine a good outcome. A few sanctions will come out of this that will make EU officials look good and further place Belarus into Russian hands (namely, a…

No one will stand for Belarus. Sanctions have the effect of running Belarus into Russian\Chinese debt pit even further.

Until the military sides with opposition (it won't) there will be no changes at all. Even if military gets involved, there will be russian "voluteers" (see Russian volunteers in Moldova 90, Balkans 92-01, Chechnya 93, Ukraine 14 ) that are there to help fight new "junta".

And then it will result in Ukraine II: electric boogaloo. Eastern Belarus is de-facto a part of Smolensk oblast' with some Russia funded murderers creating an "independent" republic. This was played out to death over the last 30 years.

And don't get me wrong. All while this will be happening, EU will be very concerned, that is for sure.

None of this will happen ofc, because all resistance will be suppressed with excessive force, at the very start. No trials, no judges.

Re: Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace

#107

Post by _0w8t »

enriquto wrote: post #42
mopsi wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Refusing service to a private flight carrying a politically sensitive person is very different from hijacking a scheduled civilian airliner by threatening to shoot it down if it doesn't cooperate. Refusing service is very common. For example, air routes in the Middle East can be very long because of countries that can't be flown over due to different alliances: https://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/images/pri…

The recent incident is painted in exactly the same light by Belarus authorities. They say that the plane was diverted due to a terrorist threat. All passengers were safely evacuated, and once the threat was cleared, they were allowed to continue their trip. During their time in Belarusian soil, one passenger was detained, for completely unrelated reasons. Of course Belarusian police could not do otherwise than detain…

There is an important difference. The Bolivian plane was warned sufficiently in advance and had enough fuel to flight back to Russia at that point. The Ryanair flight was forced to land with a military jet leaving the pilots no choice but to comply.

But I agree that what Western Europe did to Bolivian flight backfires now badly.

Re: Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace

#108

Post by gostsamo »

ols wrote: post #96
ols wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU doesn’t have a joint foregin policy. Foregin relations is still an intergovernmental matter.

„The Common Foreign and Security Policy […] deals only with a specific part of the EU's external relations, which domains include mainly Trade and Commercial Policy and other areas such as funding to third countries, etc” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Foreign_and_Security_Po...

This is a random result when you search for Borrell in Moscow. Look for his behavior in Turkey if you want some more examples of how random this guy is while he is considered an EU representative. His position requires for him to coordinate responses of the 27, but he is just wandering around wasting time and resources. As far as the EU is an economic powerhouse, letting dictators do whatever they want while allowed access to the market is making him irrelevant.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/borrell-...

Re: Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace

#109

Post by toyg »

ljf wrote: post #7
majke wrote: post #6

Apart from fuel prices, is there any economic impact? Do air carriers pay anything to the countries they fly over? (dunno, covering ATC costs?)

https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-charge-foreign-air... Yes it costs to fly through a country's airspace.

A good policy, were the European Council agree on a half-decent response, would be to directly reimburse any airline for the extra costs of flying around Belarusian airspace. At that point even the Ryanair scum would probably agree to the detour.

Re: Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace

#110

Post by hutzlibu »

tacker2000 wrote: post #41
golergka wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

European diplomats being "strongly concerned" have long become a running joke here in Russia: https://twitter.com/ISEUConcerned I sincerely hope that this statement finally gets backed up by some decisive action that can put real pressure on these dictators, but I don't get my hopes up.

As a EU citizen, this is quite hilarious. The EU is so toothless it hurts.

Would you prefer a strong, centralised EU government with a strong leader (aka dictator)?

Well, I don't.

But this is the only way to take direct action - as the individual members are not of a single mind.

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