Don’t Overfly Belarus

[Мастер]

Amidst conflicting accounts of what happened to a RyanAir flight containing a Belorussian dissident, airlines are starting to avoid Belorussian airspace.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57239162

Do they still avoid overflying Ukraine? If so, this is getting decidedly inconvenient.

[Arneb]

Having overflown Belarus became extremely inconvenient for the young dissident.

[Мастер]

Having overflown Belarus became extremely inconvenient for the young dissident.

Yes, there is that. The level of inconvenience is lower for non-dissidents. Or those who are not suspected of being dissidents.

[Richard A]

I was wondering when this topic would appear. Of course Mactep is right that the level of inconvenience for non-dissidents overflying Belarus is inversely proportionate to that for dissidents. But arguably the level of inconvenience for non-dissidents of not overflying Belarus is not that great. It could, true, add an hour (actually not quite that) to, say, the flight time between Moscow and Brussels - but a Russian with no issue with Lukashenko could solve that problem by flying Aeroflot.

But joking aside, the real issue is that a clear message needs to be sent that this is unacceptable. The EU and UK have both made a start by banning Belarusian planes from their airspace and instructing their airlines not to overfly Belarus. The EU is due to go on to impose sanctions. But those sanctions have got to be severe. The ones it imposed on Russia were severe enough for Russian entities (and some individuals) to spend considerable time and money trying to challenge them in the courts. That's the kind of sanctions we're talking about. Enhanced visa restrictions for their nationals for a time would be a good further step - except that a lot of them are probably barred from the EU (although not the UK) under covid restrictions anyway. Still, one encouraging step has been the extent to which the UK has itself taken action - it was, after all, an Irish plane travelling from Greece to Lithuania and Johnson and his government proudly proclaim that they Got Brexit Done. If the UK Government can continue to join our European neighbours in tightening the screw, that will send a useful message to Minsk, irrespective of any difference it may make in Brussels. And it would also do us no harm to be seen to make some effort to work with Dublin. (Thought: how many of the Brexit supporters actually realise Ryanair is an Irish airline?)