The UK government is asking airlines to avoid Belarus airspace after a Ryanair jet was forced to land in capital Minsk and a journalist travelling on board was arrested.
Foreign secretary Dominic Raab told the House of Commons he had also suspended the operating permit of the Belarusian airline Belavia and told the Civil Aviation Authority not to issue permits to any other airlines from the eastern European state.
The announcement came ahead of a summit in Brussels where the European Union is expected to impose sanctions on the regime of president Alexander Lukashenko.
European Council president Charles Michel said that the 27-nation bloc was convinced a “firm” response was needed to what he described as an “international scandal” which had put international security, civil aviation and the lives of European citizens at risk.
Mr Raab told MPs that Roman Protasevich had been arrested on “spurious” charges, and called for his immediate release, along with that of all other political prisoners in Belarus.
He branded the use of a MiG fighter jet to force flight FR4978 to the ground as “an egregious and extraordinary departure from international law”.
There was “no evidence” to support the claim of Belarus authorities that the Ryanair flight between Athens and Lithuanian capital Vilnius had to land because of a bomb threat, said Mr Raab.
And he told the Commons: “Mr Lukashenko’s regime must be held to account for such reckless and dangerous behaviour.”
Belarus’s ambassador to the UK has been summoned to the Foreign Office for a dressing down over Sunday’s incident.
Mr Raab said the UK was now considering “the panoply of sanctions” against individuals involved in the grounding of the plane, as well as sectoral sanctions against the Belarus economy.
The UK has called for an urgent meeting of the International Civil Aviation Organisation and will be raising the issue at the United Nations Security Council.
Tonight’s EU summit will hear calls from the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia for Belarusian airspace to be declared “unsafe” and EU airspace to be closed to Belarusian flights. France and Ireland said air traffic restrictions could be part of the EU’s response.
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And Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has said he will propose that all flights between Belarus and the 27 EU states be stopped until 26-year-old Protasevich is released.
But it was not immediately clear whether the bloc will seek to impose a legal ban or simply send out a “political signal” to shun Belarus.
French Europe minister Clement Beaune called the plane’s forced diversion “an act of state piracy that cannot be left unpunished”, and president Emmanuel Macron’s office said the EU might also suspend ground transit links with Belarus.
The chair of the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee Tom Tugendhat asked the Government to call for the suspension of energy pipelines in Belarus.
He told MPs: “This attack was a hijacking that turned into a kidnapping and now is a serious violation of the human rights, not just of Roman Protasevich who has been held by the Belarussian authorities, but of every passenger and member of the crew on that airliner.”
Mr Raab suggested Russia may have known about the incident in advance, telling MPs: “It’s very difficult to believe that this kind of action could have been taken without at least the acquiescence of the authorities in Moscow.”
The EU has already blacklisted 88 individuals and seven companies accused of “repression and intimidation” of people protesting against Lukashenko’s victory in a contested presidential election last year.
Shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said the aircraft incident risks creating “an extraordinarily dangerous precedent that will put journalists, dissidents and activists from the UK or anywhere else at risk.”
She told the Commons: “For a state to hijack a civilian airliner flying between two Nato allies in order to arrest a journalist is an assault on the freedoms of the air and on freedom of speech.
“Unless the consequences are swift, robust and co-ordinated it will create an extraordinarily dangerous precedent that will put journalists, dissidents and activists from the UK or anywhere else at risk every time they board a plane.”
Ms Nandy called for action to stop the Belarussian government using the London Stock Exchange to raise finances and to prevent the UK being used as “a soft touch” for corrupt elites to store funds and assets”.
And Conservative MP John Howell called for the issue of an international warrant for the arrest of Mr Lukashenko on charges of terrorism.
Lithuania today said that five of the 126 passengers who boarded the Ryanair flight in Athens did not reach their final destination.
A Belarusian university in Vilnius demanded the release of one of its students, 23-year-old Sofia Sapega, who was travelling with Mr Protasevich and was also detained in Minsk.
Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary, who referred to the incident as a state-sponsored hijacking, said on Monday he believed security agents had been on the flight and had also disembarked in Minsk.
Given the security ties between Minsk and Moscow, some European politicians have openly speculated whether Russia may have played a role in the incident.
MEP Radoslaw Sikorski, a former Polish foreign minister, tweeted: “If it turns out that the KGB operatives who boarded the Ryanair plane highjacked to Minsk were Russian, then Russian personnel and Russian assets should also be sanctioned.”
