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What did that journalist do to anger Belarus that badly? He was only 26 years old... How do you stoke a regime so badly they send a bunch of KGB agents after you? Most journalists at age 26 are still writing about cats stuck up trees...
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That's not an exhibit of how this isn't state sponsored hijacking. That's a poor attempt at whataboutism, that has surfaced several times in ALL the threads on this topic. There are several reasons that wasn't even remotely comparable, and the most obvious one is that that was diplomacy (the US closing airspaces and thereby giving the plane no choice but to land). That kind of power is wielded by the US becuase it's…
They both are hijacking using your definition. Neither were in my opinion. In both states used the powers they had to force a plane to land. Very wrong on both cases. In both cases they had the right.
Ryanair flight was coerced to land in Minsk. They didn't have a choice, the passengers were put in the harm way.
Both incident is political motivated. One is legal and safe (but a dick move). The other is brazen and dangerous.
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Not really, that plane was forced to land by not allowing it enter certain airspace. Very different from having fighter jets intercept and force a plane to land. Shameful? Maybe. Hijacking? No.
A slight diplomatic difference in tactics to achieve the same effect. I'm sure they would've ratcheted up the tactics and eventually sent fighter jets if closing the airspace failed to achieve what they wanted.
The plane could have come back to Russia. They had a choice.
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Not really, that plane was forced to land by not allowing it enter certain airspace. Very different from having fighter jets intercept and force a plane to land. Shameful? Maybe. Hijacking? No.
This case is the dictionary definition of hijacking. An act of unlawfully seizing an aircraft, vehicle, or ship while in transit.
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Not really, that plane was forced to land by not allowing it enter certain airspace. Very different from having fighter jets intercept and force a plane to land. Shameful? Maybe. Hijacking? No.
A slight diplomatic difference in tactics to achieve the same effect. I'm sure they would've ratcheted up the tactics and eventually sent fighter jets if closing the airspace failed to achieve what they wanted.
A massive difference in tactics, these two are incomparable. Just like denying someone entry at the border is not the same as arresting them and collecting rent from someone isn’t the same as robbing them.
Encouraging a plane to land by not allowing them into your airspace is not the same as calling in a fake bomb threat and forcing that plane down with fighter jets.
What did that journalist do to anger Belarus that badly? He was only 26 years old... How do you stoke a regime so badly they send a bunch of KGB agents after you? Most journalists at age 26 are still writing about cats stuck up trees...
Belarus was home to VERY large protests last year, which were quashed not with compromise but with state force. This is not a stable government, at all. It's less what Protasevich did per se and more that Lukashenko desperately needs to be seen as unopposable. The problem with employing crackdowns as a means to ensure stability is that you need to keep escalating so long as the opposition isn't completely crushed. We…