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Belarus Forced Down an Airliner to Arrest Dissident: What We Know Intelligencer 1 hr ago Chas Danner © Petras Malulas/AFP via Getty Images Ryanair Flight FR4978 after landing at Vilnius International Airport on Sunday night. Petras Malulas/AFP via Getty Images Journalist Roman Protasevich, a prominent critic of Belarus’ authoritarian president, Aleksandr Lukashenko, left Athens, Greece, on Sunday morning aboard a nonstop Ryanair flight to Vilnius, Lithuania, where Protasevich has been living in exile out of fear of arrest and imprisonment in Belarus. He never arrived. Near the end of the flight, while the plane and its 170 passengers were traveling through Belarusian air space, it was diverted to Minsk for an emergency landing where Protasevich and his companion were detained before the flight continued on to its final destination. Both Belarus and Ryanair say the diversion from the flight plan was over a purported bomb threat, and Lukashenko’s press

Belarus generalVilniaus apskritisUnited kingdomUnited statesMichal fludra nurphotoRaman pratasevichPetras malulasPetras malukasMarcin makowskiVyacheslav lysakovMargarita simonyanSviatlana tsikhanouskayaTadeusz giczanAleksandr lukashenkoAntony blinkenVladimir putin