U.S. to reimpose sanctions on Belarus after forced diversion of Ryanair flight
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The Biden administration announced Friday the United States will reimpose sanctions on Belarus after President Alexander Lukashenko forced the diversion of a commercial Ryanair flight last week to arrest a journalist on board.
An email cited by Belarusian authorities containing a purported in-flight bomb threat was sent after a plane was diverted to Minsk with a prominent Belarus opposition journalist aboard, Swiss email provider ProtonMail said Thursday, further challenging the Belarusian regime’s version of events.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko struck a defiant tone on Wednesday, saying the interception of a Ryanair flight was not a way of arresting a dissident but was necessary to protect passengers from a possible bomb and his citizens from any harm befalling the country’s nuclear power plant.
He railed against European Union sanctions and flight diversions as part of a new kind of “hybrid attack” on his country and predicted close ally and neighbor Russia was the next target.
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