Nothing material is going happen as Germany needs that gas pipe. It's obvious from the news that this hijack was done together with Russia.
Germany has general election this September and since Merkel is gone for good there is a huge possibility that the CDU (the majority party for several years now and was in favor of NordStream) will lose to green party. Green party is completely against NordStream2.
So things might actually change. But then again, it is easy to criticize when you are not in power.
"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 no…
You seem to have started writing your reply before (or instead of) reading my commment in full.
My point was that if Snowden actually was there, they wouldn't land in Austria to begin with. Unlike the RyanAir flight, the plane wasn't forcefully grounded (under a false pretense). It just wasn't let through any further, but returning was still an option.
Good, so you're in favour of an EU army? Armed invasion of Bielorussia to kidnap the guy back? The geopolitical armchair experts complain more about responses than actually giving realistic suggestions to give. (Sure, we can cut Belarus out, and see thousands of "Russian tourists" go for a holiday there right after - maybe that would be a good response?). And yes, you won't see me defending Borrell.
Friendly note: people from the country of Belarus call themselves "Belarusians" (pronounced like "bela-roo-sians", not like "bela-russians"), and take offence at the term "Bielorussia".
Noted and fixed, as the other commenter noted it was the wrong language (and yes the romance languages call it something like Bielorussia, not much that can be done about that, sorry)
i think you are mistaken here. Bat'ka in this context is more like Bat'ka Mahno, ie. a leader outside of formal rules and leading more by personal power like a leader of a gang or a rebellion (or for example in Belarussian context - "Bat'ka Minay", a commander in WWII Belarussian guerilla resistance https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A8%D0%BC%D1%8B%D1%80%D1%91... ). > it was originally used to mock Belarusian for supp…
It's belarusian word for father
I know. Similarly like the other historic cases i mentioned, nobody used that "father" meaning for Lukashenko (except for his son :) .
It's just making an option for energy cheaper. Russia needs it too, since they can't sell with profits internally. From my POV, it's just an additional option you get to sanction them with if they are acting in bad faith ( again) while getting cheaper options.
That's akin to approving products made using forced labour because they are cheaper. I think international community needs to shut down this little German-Russia thing going on. If we can learn anything from the history, such alliance never ended well for the rest of Europe.
International community just lifted sanctions against this little thing:
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.
Democracies can be capable of quick direct action too. See U.S. esp. U.S. some 50-70 years back. Democracy is no excuse for being inefficient, if democracies don't find a way to protect their values and interests, they will eventually be replaced by more efficient states
Current sanctions on Belarus are somewhere between light and negligible. There are a lot more things that could be taken away.
Expanding the sanctions to affect the entire country / citizenry has the side-effect of pushing populism there even closer to Russia, materially and emotionally, without having much effect on the actual bad actors beyond what the current sanctions do. Traditionally a next step would be political, then material, support for an organized internal opposition, but there doesn't seem to be an obvious one in this case.
Economic sanctions can be aimed at Belarusian elites and state enterprises: ban on direct export to Belarus of luxury goods, advanced technology, ban on certain imports etc. At the same time freedom of movement with transit routes via Russia or Ukraine should be encouraged, to support low-volume trade and grey market. The bigger is shadow economy and the less concentrated is private sector, the more difficult is it for the regime to control it. It stimulates low level corruption and reduces loyalty of the law enforcement, increasing the chances of the opposition in the future.
Current sanctions on Belarus are somewhere between light and negligible. There are a lot more things that could be taken away.
Expanding the sanctions to affect the entire country / citizenry has the side-effect of pushing populism there even closer to Russia, materially and emotionally, without having much effect on the actual bad actors beyond what the current sanctions do. Traditionally a next step would be political, then material, support for an organized internal opposition, but there doesn't seem to be an obvious one in this case.
Sanctions are almost always too weak. Any sanction that the government can withstand is too weak and will have the affect you describe. A strong sanction that says "release the prisoner immediately" will be short and not affect citizens long enough to create such a sentiment.
I know that people can joke about the west in Russia but are people allowed to make jokes about their own government in Russia and in the associated eastern european states? Is it like China yet? I'm guessing not as there's no visible list of banned words and phrases, but we don't see (in HN) much criticism of Russia, Belarus from there, just attacks on the hypocrisy of the West. Do you see it headed towards China, w…
Criticism is allowed unless you have ambitions to work in government. Critique of the government has become actually quite common in the Russian stand up comedy scene. There are some exceptions, like you cannot show any public disrespect to the Head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov (you can google how people apologise to him). Edit (forgot to mention): also, participating in anti-government protests often resul…
> participating in anti-government protests often results in people losing their jobs or being expelled from the universities
This is quickly becoming the situation in the US if you criticize popular political movements.
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…
Be that as it may, the "Somebody else got away with it!" line is not a valid defense for anything.