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…
The airlines making those decisions have no incentive (or likely desire) to punish Belarus or engage in international politics.
They just don't want their planes diverted by MiGs.
What is the probability of this account being owned by Russian government? I would say 99% and you’re just perpetuating the same propaganda.
No, much smaller. I would agree that the EU's foreign policy is a disaster because of traditionally corrupted elites. The fact that the russian elites are even more corrupted is not an excuse.
as it should be, the EU states act collectively at most trough NATO and the current decade EU so focused on being the political voice of its members is something being tacked on against the initial premise by which its members came together; the EU should always had been an economic union first to combat the tremendous advantage of the internal market that both USA and China enjoy and nothing more.
we ended up in such situation because there are usually no consequences of governments doing bad to their citizens. UN is a joke. All sanctions are applied only against Russia, but for any other case/country what governments are usually doing are cheap words: "condemning/concerned/we are deeply ..." that's all. There is no consensus inside UN on what is good and what is bad for people, countries have veto rights, whi…
UN is a forum where countries can talk to each other in a more or less moderated way. But I can see your point - UN is useless when it comes to dealing with dictators, stopping crimes against humanity while they happen, etc.
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.
What is the probability of this account being owned by Russian government? I would say 99% and you’re just perpetuating the same propaganda.
Golergka has been here longer than you and has a much larger online footprint than you do. The chances of you being a propaganda account are larger than theirs. Besides the obvious rule violation I think you should probably apologize. Flagging this comment.
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…
You don't know anything. Few hundred people paid with their lives for speaking their mind. Either killed in the most gruesome way, or just customarily disappeared. There are at least a hundred something of journalists only who were murdered. It's a brutal KGB-mafia dictatorship trying its best masquerading as a normal country. You will always see Russian diplomats on every high nosed UN, and OSCE talkshop on human ri…
The question was if people (I assumed a regular folk, not journalists and opposition) are allowed to make jokes about the government, and I answered to that. Of course I know that Russia has no traces of democracy left and I am aware how Russia targets high-profile people, including journalists. You should be more reserved before telling people they don't know anything.
Only the airlines, not the nation. You can fly from Kazakhstan on an European carrier to Europe. Europe previously have also banned shoddy Soviet era airliners that are both incredibly loud, toxic and quite unsafe, which is the right thing to do.
I feel this is a fairly pedantic correction, though of course you're very correct nonetheless. My opinion is that banning all of a nations major airlines from operating in your airspace is functionally equivalent to banning that nation. Belarus is much like Kazakhstan in that the vast majority of routes from its airports are by its national airlines. Most of the routes to the EU are flown by Belavia (Belarus' nationa…
Well, I feel like it's important to point out that people can still fly direct from $nation to Europe despite the ban.
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…
Consequence will be that Belarus can no longer divert planes and capture dissidents. They've also made themselves even more of a pariah.
Very much NOT the same ending. Had this theoretical situation happened, and had fighter jets been scrambled, they would have escorted the plane out of their airspace. They would NOT have forced it to land and arrested any passengers.
That's just speculation. Chances are they would have actually grounded the plane instead, because nobody would want to risk the plane falling down because of lack of fuel while being escorted. Let's be honest here: Putin and Lukashenko can get away with this sort of shit because "we" first showed that it's acceptable behaviour. This is the risk of breaking unwritten rules on the international stage: sooner or later a…
You say "nobody would", but that is standard procedure when a plane enters an airspace it is not allowed into. I don't see why there would be an exception in this case, and you want to argue that, I think you will need to actually justify that.
Yes, and all of them take time to be put into motion. A lot of different parties will have to agree, including immoral profit-driven scum like Ryanair. That's what democracy looks like in practice; it ain't as pretty and orderly as a tyrannical dictatorship, where one guy says something and everyone complies right away. All of that means it's early to complain about any lack of European reaction. In some areas there…
Yes, but, remember mh-17 - the plane with 200 dutch citizens that russians blasted out of the sky in 2014? I'm sure strong response from the EU is coming in any minute now.
Russia was sanctioned as part of the annexation of Crimea, of which that crime was part.