I am surprised Hungary agreed. And Poland. The governments in those nations are not shy to touch on the freedoms of their population, and often disagree with the EU when the EU points these things out. Also Poland being directly next to Belarus will affect their relations.
Orban just privatized all universities and preparing to privatize all available houses (robbed 10s of billions of dollars from the public), and people are really pissed even though they are still afraid to go on the streets. Orban went too far, and now he started to play a bit nicer.
This is not exact, the EU ban decision is not taken yet. see link here: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2021... "- calls on the Council to adopt the necessary measures to ban overflight of EU airspace by Belarusian airlines and prevent access to EU airports of flights operated by such airlines;" decision has still to be made by the council, and then - to my understanding - implemented by all m…
> This is not exact, the EU ban decision is not taken yet. see link here: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2021 ... The decision is taken. You are misunderstanding what you are reading. The press release follows an urgent meeting from the Council. The Council is the reunion of all the EU heads of state. They have already agreed to the ban. The sentence you are quoting just means that they now h…
Dear WastingMyTime89 (<-- not at all!): Excellent post. Thank you to clarify these important details! I wonder if but other (non-EU) European states will follow suit, such as United Kingdom, Norway, Switzerland, etc.
Glenn Greenwald's latest piece on this: > What Belarus did, while illegal, is not unprecedented. The dangerous tactic was pioneered by the same U.S. and E.U. officials now righteously condemning it. https://greenwald.substack.com/p/as-anger-toward-belarus-mou...
I don’t think the equivalence really holds:
“while flying over Austria ... they were told by France, Spain and Italy that their permission to fly over those countries’ air space had been rescinded”
> This is not exact, the EU ban decision is not taken yet. see link here: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2021 ... The decision is taken. You are misunderstanding what you are reading. The press release follows an urgent meeting from the Council. The Council is the reunion of all the EU heads of state. They have already agreed to the ban. The sentence you are quoting just means that they now h…
The misreading stems from the editorialising xendo did with the headline. xendo submitted "2 hours ago", so between 0629 and 0729 GMT. The BBC headline at 0627 GMT was "EU agrees new Belarus sanctions after plane arrest" https://web.archive.org/web/20210525062723if_/https://www.bb...
HN mods should correct the headline to match the article.
Whom they are punishing? Elites use private jets and will just laugh at that. Regular Belarusians will have difficulties, yes.
I guess that's up to who is interpreting the conclusion ( https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2021... ) It says: > calls on the Council to adopt the necessary measures to ban overflight of EU airspace by Belarusian airlines and prevent access to EU airports of flights operated by such airlines; Now I don't know how private jets usually works, but isn't there some company responsible for the flight…
So in the worst case they’ll use Lufthansa or Emirates? Okay.
Flying over Belarus might be a good income for the country - no longer. An interesting shift of the last decade or so of sanction wars is that sanctions must be targeted against the regime , not the people. Otherwise it's a bit of an own goal - you give the regime a bogeyman to point at. As such, this seems like a good, pragmatic type of sanction. Few regular Belarusians will feel the impact, but it does strike at th…
I'm not sure if Belarussians having to cancel their holidays to the West and going to Crimea instead is going to have the desired effect of driving sympathies among Belarussians toward the west. Moreover the people who actually like Lukashenko will probably be pretty indifferent to this. They weren't planning on flying to Berlin any time soon. I'm almost certain Putin will jump on the chance to have alternate routes…
The desired effect is to increase pressure on Lukashenko and I'm sure every holidaymaker with a ruined trip knows very well whose stupid stunt is to blame for it.
I am surprised Hungary agreed. And Poland. The governments in those nations are not shy to touch on the freedoms of their population, and often disagree with the EU when the EU points these things out. Also Poland being directly next to Belarus will affect their relations.
Poland is directly affected, as the FR4978 with Pratasievič on board was a SP-RSM belonging to Ryanair Sun and registered in Poland.
But how often do Lukashenko and his circle actually fly out of Belarus anyway? He already had no problem with closing his own borders before anyway, so it's not like this is going to seem like a strong move to him and it only really hurts the Belarusian people.
They sanctioned individuals involved in the decision too. And at some point, the Belarusian people will have to take responsibility for their leaders. I'm not saying it should happen today or that they should start a civil war, but they should think about ways to change.
You should read up on the opposition movement in Belarus before making such insensitive suggestions. Dissidents are regularly arrested, beaten and even raped, yet many turn out week after week to protest. Consider if you'd be brave enough to do what they already do first.
I am surprised Hungary agreed. And Poland. The governments in those nations are not shy to touch on the freedoms of their population, and often disagree with the EU when the EU points these things out. Also Poland being directly next to Belarus will affect their relations.
Poland-Belarus relations are icy at best, since Belarus is a sock-puppet of Russia, while Poland is strongly aligned with the US.
Poland has been strongly anti-Lukashenka for a long time, and since 2007 broadcasts a Belarusian-language satellite TV channel (Belsat). It's probably the only non-regime-controlled Belarusian speaking TV.