[HN Gopher] Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus air...
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Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace
Author : underscore_ku
Score : 536 points
Date : 2021-05-24 09:13 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lrt.lt)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lrt.lt)
| [deleted]
| erentz wrote:
| It's odd to me that the Ryanair flight yesterday was already
| closer to its destination of Vilnius than Minsk when it turned
| around.
|
| Ryanair said that the crew had been "notified by Belarus (Air
| Traffic Control) of a potential security threat on board and were
| instructed to divert to the nearest airport, Minsk".
|
| So they didn't have an incident onboard? There were no hijackers
| claiming to have a bomb? Just ATC telling them they have a bomb
| on board? And instead of landing at the nearest airport of
| Vilnius they turned to take a longer, more indirect route to a
| further away airport of Minsk?
|
| This would seem obviously suspicious to me. If you have a bomb on
| board, wouldn't you want to go to the nearest airport, not the
| one further away? Wouldn't you ask why you are being redirected
| further away? Then wouldn't the response when you point out
| you're closer to Vilnius and for safety want to land there make
| it clear to you something fishy was up? I would love to hear the
| radio communications and any communications back to Ryanair
| operations on this one.
| rraihansaputra wrote:
| That would be the normal procedure, but there is not much to do
| when the aircraft is pursued and escorted by fighter planes.
| Any country has jurisdiction over their airspace, including
| shooting down any non-compliant aircraft.
| csomar wrote:
| They sent a fighter jet. I don't think the pilot had much of a
| choice.
| EvilEy3 wrote:
| Why is this downvoted?
| toyg wrote:
| Yeah, this. No civil-aviation pilot is going to argue the
| fine points of law while in target range of an armed MiG.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Ai have serious doubts that they would date shoot down the
| plane, but obviously this is such a wild scenario for a
| normal pilot that they cannot be blamed for not turning it
| into a game of chicken
| amelius wrote:
| You want to fly over uninhabited areas. Distance comes next.
| [deleted]
| slezyr wrote:
| > It's odd to me that the Ryanair flight yesterday was already
| closer to its destination of Vilnius than Minsk when it turned
| around.
|
| Closer, but it had the wrong altitude for Vilnius. They were
| intercepted earlier. See this visualization
|
| https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/1396482250812841986
| tomp wrote:
| Very interesting! Is there a sensible explanation for this?
| Have they known up-front that the flight is going to be
| diverted? Or maybe they were radio-ed before, and there was
| some discussion / negotiation (during which time, they
| aborted their descent to Vilnius)...
| [deleted]
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| A plane slows down in descent to an airport, so my guess
| would be that they tried to leave Belarusian airspace as
| fast as possible, but it wasn't fast enough.
| ols wrote:
| This is a published rule of Belorussian airspace. If there is a
| terrorist threat onboard a plane in it the plane cannot leave
| the airspace and must land in Belarus. I don't know if this is
| a common rule or not. Maybe it was intentionaly established for
| situations like this?
| flixic wrote:
| In case you missed, yesterday a plane flying from Athens to
| Vilnius was intercepted by Belarusian fighter jet and a
| helicopter and landed in Minsk, to arrest an opposition
| journalist.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57219860
| chinathrow wrote:
| https://www.aeroinside.com/15715/ryanair-sun-b738-near-minsk...
| 4cao wrote:
| This appears to be copied word-for-word from the Aviation
| Herald, the original source:
| http://avherald.com/h?article=4e7d7208
|
| Edit: seems this is allowed by AV Herald under certain
| circumstances [1]:
|
| > If you purchase a subscription, you are allowed to
| republish any textual information provided by our articles
| during your subscription period in any form within your
| publication - you are allowed to copy and paste our articles
| onto your website/newspaper/magazine - provided you credit
| The Aviation Herald properly by providing a link to our
| original article.
|
| And the footer of that article says:
|
| > This article is published under license from Avherald.com.
| (c) of text by Avherald.com.
|
| Anyway, it's probably better to link directly to the original
| (also a lighter website).
|
| 1. http://avherald.com/h?faq=
| thih9 wrote:
| The diverted plane has been discussed here yesterday at:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27255561 .
| tuyguntn wrote:
| we ended up in such situation because there are usually no
| consequences of governments doing bad to their citizens. UN is a
| joke. All sanctions are applied only against Russia, but for any
| other case/country what governments are usually doing are cheap
| words: "condemning/concerned/we are deeply ..." that's all.
|
| There is no consensus inside UN on what is good and what is bad
| for people, countries have veto rights, which shouldn't exist if
| there were clear guidelines on what is allowed and what is not.
| Please show us some real actions and make authoritarian regimes
| feel pain for doing harm. Shutdown all the incoming and outgoing
| flights to/from Belarus, including transits and goods.
| redleader55 wrote:
| UN is a forum where countries can talk to each other in a more
| or less moderated way. But I can see your point - UN is useless
| when it comes to dealing with dictators, stopping crimes
| against humanity while they happen, etc.
| standardUser wrote:
| If the UN were used in the way you are suggesting, the UN
| wouldn't exist.
| tuyguntn wrote:
| https://www.un.org/un70/en/content/history/index.html
|
| > The United Nations is an international organization founded
| in 1945 after the Second World War by 51 countries _committed
| to maintaining international peace and security_ , developing
| friendly relations among nations and promoting social
| progress, _better living standards and human rights._
|
| If UN is committed to do something good for having better
| living standards and human rights, then they must keep their
| promise and try to do something, otherwise just stop
| pretending being someone you are not and shutdown this
| organization.
|
| I think we have passed the point in human history where
| local/national interests were above any other interests, now
| we should think about interests of humans. Be it Russian,
| Belarus, Palestinian, Israeli, Uighur, Armenian, black or
| white and so on, if human rights are violated, action should
| be taken and there must be a consequence for violating it,
| not only words thrown. US shouldn't have veto rights when
| rights of humans are violated, be it your best friend Israel
| or Saudi Arabia.
| toyg wrote:
| You can think what you want, but the reality is that the
| majority of the world still lives in poverty and ignorance,
| with all that it entails (and even the well-educated are
| not exactly guaranteed to have the same priorities as you,
| e.g. Israel). If you go around invading every human-right-
| violatin' piece of land, very soon you won't have an army.
|
| The UN has its issues, like the League of Nations before
| that, but it's still a place where the world tries to
| communicate and (occasionally) solve (some) problems. It
| has lasted longer than the LoN _precisely_ because it has
| not taken the "activist" bent of its predecessor. It
| cannot solve everything, maybe even _anything_ , but it's
| still better to have such an assembly than not having it.
| If anything, it provides some legitimacy to humanitarian
| efforts, when enough countries in the Security Council
| agree on a deployment.
| tuyguntn wrote:
| > If you go around invading every human-right-violatin
|
| I am not saying invading, what I am saying is taking real
| actions by sanctioning all equally, not just sanctioning
| Russia because some EU countries or the US doesn't like
| it, but also sanction Saudi Arabia and Israel for
| violating human rights.
| philwelch wrote:
| It's impossible for the UN to both (a) grant membership to
| every broadly recognized independent country in the world
| and (b) consistently act in support of human rights.
| activatedgeek wrote:
| > UN is a joke.
|
| I just finished reading "Washington Bullets" [1]. (Part of) It
| is a crash course into how and why institutions like UN, IMF
| etc. are they way they are.
|
| And honestly, I just feel paralyzed after reading the book.
| These institutions just don't have the clout by design.
|
| [1]: https://www.librarything.com/work/25426761/book/200164537
| belter wrote:
| Ryanair pilots just made a statement. It looks like it was not
| that bad:
| https://twitter.com/Trexorman/status/1396775300650917888/pho...
| clon wrote:
| Seems Ryanair has not learned much though. PFO-->TLL RYR7BJ is
| traversing Batka's personal airspace as I write this comment.
| andrewshadura wrote:
| Please don't use the word batka to refer to Lukashenko. The
| word means father, and it was originally used to mock
| Belarusian for supposedly liking his approach to ruling the
| country. He's no father to any of us, and it's insulting to
| Belarusians to see someone referring to him this way.
| clon wrote:
| Your comment is pertinent, so I won't change mine. Apologies.
|
| In my country the word is frequently used to carry sarcasm
| towards the role that Lukashenko believes himself to have. In
| other words, it is meant as sarcasm towards the tyrant's ego,
| not the gullibility of the nation.
| trhway wrote:
| i think you are mistaken here. Bat'ka in this context is more
| like Bat'ka Mahno, ie. a leader outside of formal rules and
| leading more by personal power like a leader of a gang or a
| rebellion (or for example in Belarussian context - "Bat'ka
| Minay", a commander in WWII Belarussian guerilla resistance h
| ttps://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A8%D0%BC%D1%8B%D1%80%D1%91..
| .).
|
| > it was originally used to mock Belarusian for supposedly
| liking his approach to ruling the country.
|
| not even close. It has always been used in the "leader"
| meaning described above.
|
| >He's no father to any of us, and it's insulting to
| Belarusians to see someone referring to him this way.
|
| as nobody uses it as "father" in this context it is hard to
| see your point.
| liaukovv wrote:
| It's belarusian word for father
| trhway wrote:
| I know. Similarly like the other historic cases i
| mentioned, nobody used that "father" meaning for
| Lukashenko (except for his son :) .
| itsyaboi wrote:
| A better translation (that includes the connotations
| behind the word) would be "pops".
| intricatedetail wrote:
| Nothing material is going happen as Germany needs that gas pipe.
| It's obvious from the news that this hijack was done together
| with Russia.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| As much as I despise the Russian regime, the American sabotage
| of that project aren't much better. Power to Germany if they
| decide to choose which party they hand control to. At least
| this way the American influences are limited because of
| competition in the energy space. With the US desperately
| clinging to remain their control over the European energy
| market, Russia's attempts to take their place and Germany's
| nonsensical denouncement of nuclear energy, the entire project
| is a cesspool of power struggles and corruption.
|
| I don't find Russian involvement very believable. Belarus don't
| need Russia to force a plane to land, they can do their own
| state-funded terrorism like any dictatorship.
| romanovcode wrote:
| Germany has general election this September and since Merkel is
| gone for good there is a huge possibility that the CDU (the
| majority party for several years now and was in favor of
| NordStream) will lose to green party. Green party is completely
| against NordStream2.
|
| So things might actually change. But then again, it is easy to
| criticize when you are not in power.
| redleader55 wrote:
| My feeling as someone looking from outside, is that Merkel
| was forced to continue and buy gas from Russia because of the
| public outcry against nuclear power following the Fukushima
| disaster. The Green party might not be so eager to support
| nuclear, either. So then, without nuclear, without gas, there
| isn't a lot of choice for Germany in terms of energy.
| tremon wrote:
| Merkel has done plenty of things without major public
| support. She could have declared "wir schaffen es mit
| Atomkraft" and the country would likely have accepted that.
| romanovcode wrote:
| Probably you're right, however if they win and suddenly
| start supporting russian gas they would be looking like
| complete hyporcites.
| eplanit wrote:
| Germany should really consider term limits for the bundestag
| and chancellor. Allowing a single politician to rule the
| country for an entire generation is absurd.
| romanovcode wrote:
| The limit is not set, however chancellor must be voted in
| every 46 to 48 months.
|
| However your second point is not correct at all, Germany
| had made their beurocracy specifically in such a way after
| WW2 that one person cannot dictate/rule the country. Every
| decision must pass through appropreate ministries first.
| This is one of the reasons COVID vaccination rollout was so
| slow in the beginning but after all the "approvals" were
| met they are vaccinating ~1m people a day. Chancellor in
| Germany is not even close to power of President in US, for
| example.
| eplanit wrote:
| Thank you for the clarification -- but Merkel has been in
| power for over 15 years. I don't care how many interested
| parties and fellow bureaucrats keep re-electing her, or
| that her position is less-than-queen. For the rest of the
| world, she's the face of Germany. Time for a new one --
| like maybe after 5 years at the helm.
| redleader55 wrote:
| Germany insistence on closing nuclear power plants is doing
| Europe a lot of harm. It opens up one of the great powers of
| Europe to be controlled by Russia.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| It's just making an option for energy cheaper.
|
| Russia needs it too, since they can't sell with profits
| internally.
|
| From my POV, it's just an additional option you get to
| sanction them with if they are acting in bad faith ( again)
| while getting cheaper options.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| The only option it gives is to shut down gas for Ukraine
| while supplying their friends in Germany.
| intricatedetail wrote:
| That's akin to approving products made using forced labour
| because they are cheaper. I think international community
| needs to shut down this little German-Russia thing going
| on. If we can learn anything from the history, such
| alliance never ended well for the rest of Europe.
| aivisol wrote:
| International community just lifted sanctions against
| this little thing:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57180674
| xvilka wrote:
| France is much smarter in this regard. They are pushing
| nuclear and successful in that. This is why Germany buys
| electricity from them.
| casept wrote:
| The central government doesn't even want that pipe all that
| badly anymore, it's mostly the clowns governing the federal
| state of Mecklenburg-Prepommerania who want to continue.
| arpa wrote:
| No dictator is forever.
| sumedh wrote:
| Yes bit innocents are murdered during the dictator's regime.
| upgrejd wrote:
| Nothing is forever.
| [deleted]
| steve76 wrote:
| Dictators defeat themselves with their inability to administer
| justice. As bad as some people are, they still have their day
| in court and get a chance to make their case. The law improves.
| People strengthen. Innocent get a chance. Next wrung up, the
| just defeat themselves because no one likes them. It's possible
| to be just and still make things nice. The top of the heap are
| the obscure. They live simple lives in paradise with very
| little effort. No one knows about them.
|
| Professional soldiers die first in conflict. Their flaws are
| the first to reveal. Everyone else looks inwards and fixes
| their flaws, asking what it is they have done to bring this on
| them. Those flaws get fixed, and the conflict ends. The purpose
| of action in conflict is to limit the violence on the return to
| a civil life of mutual respect. That's what it truly is.
|
| Some nations think one may call themselves a journalist and get
| to do whatever they want and laws don't apply to them. They may
| fuel race divisions, increase the murder rate, burn cities,
| corrupt institutions created for everyone's benefit, and
| working with their commie friends to kill millions with a
| bioweapon just to win an election. This is wrong. Freedom of
| speech means the powerful cannot speak perfectly. If they
| could, we would all be perfect and have no need for them. Since
| they can misspeak, they can't punish anyone else for their
| speech.
|
| Don't deal with animals. There's no talking to them. If there
| was, vets would prescribe bed rest.
| aSimplePlanner wrote:
| https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/corruption/bel...
| giva wrote:
| https://www.flightradar24.com/WZZ6285/27cf8309
| bombcar wrote:
| Interesting - they avoid Russia (it appears overflying Russia
| instead would also be about the same distance and involve only
| one overfly fee).
| chipsa wrote:
| Russia actually only allows one airline per country to
| overfly, generally[1]. So if Aer Lingus already has the
| concession, Ryanair can't even pay. Also, doesn't really
| solve this because Russia wouldn't have an issue doing
| exactly this either.
|
| 1: https://simpleflying.com/overflight-fees/
| redleader55 wrote:
| From this flightradar track, it seems WizzAir is also doing
| this.
| fy20 wrote:
| Ryanair is not though :-)
|
| https://www.flightradar24.com/RYR7BJ/27cf72bf
| meepmorp wrote:
| Obviously nobody onboard paid the fee to avoid hostile
| airspace.
| maratc wrote:
| One's Flew Over the Lukoo's Nest.
| majke wrote:
| Apart from fuel prices, is there any economic impact? Do air
| carriers pay anything to the countries they fly over? (dunno,
| covering ATC costs?)
| ljf wrote:
| https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-charge-foreign-air...
|
| Yes it costs to fly through a country's airspace.
| toyg wrote:
| A good policy, were the European Council agree on a half-
| decent response, would be to directly reimburse any airline
| for the extra costs of flying around Belarusian airspace. At
| that point even the Ryanair scum would probably agree to the
| detour.
| usr1106 wrote:
| Passengers can pay their tickets. If the flight path is a
| bit longer because of regulations they pay a bit more. No
| tax money needed for this.
| szatkus wrote:
| Huh? Why US airspace is so extended?
|
| I found a map for that https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/h
| eadquarters_offices/ab...
| maratc wrote:
| This will likely have no consequences to the regime in Belarus,
| while increasing costs to these Baltic airlines.
|
| A policy that might achieve something would be if the Baltic
| states, together with Poland and Ukraine, would close their
| airspace to Belavia planes, until the detained passenger is
| delivered to his destination in Vilnius.
|
| This will increase costs to Belarusian airlines, which would be a
| problem to the regime.
| ngcazz wrote:
| Don't airlines pay for airspace utilization rights?
| mrweasel wrote:
| >This will likely have no consequences to the regime in Belarus
|
| That's the problem with sanctions, at some point you run of of
| things to take away. From then on your target can pretty much
| do what ever they want, knowing that things can't really get
| any worse.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Current sanctions on Belarus are somewhere between light and
| negligible.
|
| There are a _lot_ more things that could be taken away.
| morelisp wrote:
| Expanding the sanctions to affect the entire country /
| citizenry has the side-effect of pushing populism there
| even closer to Russia, materially and emotionally, without
| having much effect on the actual bad actors beyond what the
| current sanctions do.
|
| Traditionally a next step would be political, then
| material, support for an organized internal opposition, but
| there doesn't seem to be an obvious one in this case.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Economic sanctions can be aimed at Belarusian elites and
| state enterprises: ban on direct export to Belarus of
| luxury goods, advanced technology, ban on certain imports
| etc. At the same time freedom of movement with transit
| routes via Russia or Ukraine should be encouraged, to
| support low-volume trade and grey market. The bigger is
| shadow economy and the less concentrated is private
| sector, the more difficult is it for the regime to
| control it. It stimulates low level corruption and
| reduces loyalty of the law enforcement, increasing the
| chances of the opposition in the future.
| morelisp wrote:
| > Economic sanctions can be aimed at Belarusian elites
| and state enterprises
|
| Yes, this is already happening since last year, and was
| already scheduled to be expanded for a fourth time in
| June. I assume this clinches that, and probably more.
|
| But the fact _nobody seems to know there 's been
| sanctions since last year_ suggests my other point -
| they're woefully ineffective as long as they can get
| other support.
| Touche wrote:
| Sanctions are almost always too weak. Any sanction that
| the government can withstand is too weak and will have
| the affect you describe. A strong sanction that says
| "release the prisoner immediately" will be short and not
| affect citizens long enough to create such a sentiment.
| morelisp wrote:
| What kind of sanction do you have in mind?
| Touche wrote:
| No use of airspace and no trade with NATO countries until
| the prisoners are released. It would take a week.
| morelisp wrote:
| No use of airspace is already being discussed and likely
| going to happen.
|
| NATO is a military alliance, not a trade union. There's
| no way for them to organize what you're suggesting.
|
| > It would take a week.
|
| Fidel might like to have a word with you...
| bluGill wrote:
| NATO members do talk to each other over a lot of
| different channels. It will take more than a week to
| organize, but it can be done.
| morelisp wrote:
| But it will be as e.g. an EU action, not a NATO action.
| (I have doubts they will get anyone on the west side of
| the Atlantic to sign on, but I hope I'm wrong.) And the
| EU has already been acting.
|
| My point is: There's a lot of people in this thread
| demanding a vague "something" be done, but it's really
| not clear whether there is "something" between what the
| EU's plan has already been for months and a hot war,
| other than some ill-considered immediate panic.
| Touche wrote:
| Was Fidel being offered sanctions to end by releasing a
| specific hostage? Or was he being asked to relinquish
| power?
| mikro2nd wrote:
| Not so. Sanctions can be devastatingly effective applied by a
| significant majority of the world over a length of time.
| Sanctions were _the_ instrument that brought an end to the
| Apartheid regime in South Africa: sanctions, having brought
| the South African economy to its knees, were a key factor in
| forcing the ruling regime to the negotiating table.
|
| Yes, in some fairytale world the ruling National Party could
| have continued "doing whatever they want". Here in reality
| things would certainly have got worse, and the National Party
| government could see that the end-game was inescapable.
| Sanctions worked then, and they'll work again.
| bmmayer1 wrote:
| I know a little about this; it's pretty controversial,
| historically, whether Western sanctions, vs. decades of
| civil war and violent insurrection (often backed by subvert
| support from the Kremlin with the CIA playing defense) in
| SA and neighboring states were the catalyst. There are
| plenty of historians / economists who would argue that
| sanctions made things worse for the people of South Africa
| (much the same is said today about sanctions against Iran).
| In any event, that sanctions where "the" instrument that
| brought an end to apartheid should not be stated as if it
| were a universally accepted fact.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Let's ignore how ridiculous it is to give the West the
| credit for ending apartheid and that the economic growth of
| South Africa really doesn't back up your claim that
| sanctions were the key.
|
| Even assuming you're right about the cause, the success
| story of sanctions would be a South African economy that
| never recovered leading to the suffering of millions.
| That's what happens when they "work."
| elliekelly wrote:
| What about Cuba? North Korea? Iran? They've been sanctioned
| for _decades_ with devastating human consequences and
| little to no sign of those sanctions spurring any
| meaningful change.
| vertis wrote:
| I don't disagree with you but I do wonder whether for
| sanctions to be successful relies a lot on the way the
| population is feeling about the regime at the start. If
| they population decides to dig in, then the sanctions
| start to have a negative effect (in terms of getting a
| desired outcome).
|
| If on the other hand the population is already angry at
| the regime, maybe it has the desired effect.
|
| Idle musing without supporting evidence.
| EdTsft wrote:
| Only the US sanctioned Cuba and while it was pretty
| harmful, they were still able to trade with most other
| countries. North Korea has China right next door as a big
| trade partner, and can trade with many non-US countries
| as well. As for Iran, from what I can tell UN sanctions
| really only started to ramp up in the 2010s and those did
| have an effect in getting Iran to suspend its nuclear
| program.
|
| Edit: But to be clear, I think the US sanctions on Cuba
| are gratuitous and cruel. Cuba is not some rogue state
| and there are many worse dictatorships that aren't
| sanctioned. However, I think it reinforces the point that
| "sanctions can be devastatingly effective applied by a
| significant majority of the world" because in the Cuba
| case the rest of the world didn't agree.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Only the US sanctioned Cuba and while it was pretty
| harmful, they were still able to trade with most other
| countries.
|
| There were considerable limits (particularly on foreign
| investment in Cuba) because parts of the US sanctions
| regime include retaliatory sanctions on entities making
| use of certain property in Cuba (some of these were
| suspended for a while, but restored under Trump in 2017.)
| rchaud wrote:
| The impact of sanctions against apartheid SA get talked
| about a lot because it's a good example of international
| cooperation for non-violent activism.
|
| Unfortunately talking only about sanctions ignores that
| plenty of governments resisted and watered down the
| sanctions because the apartheid regime's anti-communist
| ideology.
|
| The negotiations to phase out apartheid for a democracy
| began mere months after the fall of the Berlin wall. At
| that point the collapse of the USSR was imminent, and the
| apartheid regime's utility as an anti-Communist outpost had
| expired.
| dorgo wrote:
| >, knowing that things can't really get any worse.
|
| But also knowing that things can get better. The incentive to
| do the "right" thing doesn't disappear. It only can't be
| increased further.
| s_dev wrote:
| Russia and Belarus make money from the planes flying over their
| airspace. They won't be collecting that money so there is at
| least one consequence.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| Clarification: not just these 2 countries. I wonder if all
| countries do it.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Most of them do, but most will also waive it for flights
| originating or departing from said country.
|
| Some countries go above and beyond; Russia typically grants
| overflight access to one airline per country, so SAS has
| the ability to fly over Russia while Norwegian Air never
| has.
| tootie wrote:
| Consequence will be that Belarus can no longer divert planes
| and capture dissidents. They've also made themselves even more
| of a pariah.
| ramblerman wrote:
| I like that idea, this is the perfect *nonviolent* answer to
| this.
|
| The EU's response is so important here, they have already
| proved time and time again they are a dog which is all bark and
| no bite.
|
| I'm sure China and Turkey are watching eagerly.
|
| It doesn't have to be a military response, but no response or
| the typical waving the finger in the air, can not be afforded
| here.
| Iv wrote:
| > they have already proved time and time again they are a dog
| which is all bark and no bite.
|
| People keep saying that as if that was a kind of universally
| acknowledged wisdom.
|
| Here is a map of the 39 countries targeted by European
| sanctions (not counting the ones specifically targeting ISIS
| territories or various regions of Ukraine):
| https://sanctionsmap.eu/#/main
|
| There has been sanctions against Belarus for a while,
| suspended when they freed political prisoners, reinstated in
| light of the recent crackdown on elections. Here is the list
| of the 88 persons and 7 legal entities under EU sanctions
| (well technically, Council of Europe): https://eur-
| lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...
|
| Turkey doesn't have to "watch", they also received sanctions
| after the drilling standoff two years ago.
| [deleted]
| ramblerman wrote:
| I'm an EU citizen we obviously have a different viewpoint
| on this but the link you sent to me shows precisely all
| bark in my opinion.
|
| Holding off on a few weapons exports here and there is
| meaningless.
|
| > People keep saying that
|
| If it's the general concensus there may be some reason for
| that. I'm sure Belarus wouldnt try this with a US plane.
|
| > Turkey doesn't have to "watch", they also received
| sanctions after the drilling standoff two years ago.
|
| If the reaction to hijacking an EU plane flying from one EU
| nation to another is indeed just some export/import
| sanctions, then yes I do think Turkey will find that
| interesting.
| ikrenji wrote:
| UK company -> UK plane
| ramblerman wrote:
| headquarters are in Dublin.
| ciceryadam wrote:
| and the plane is registered in Poland
| Iv wrote:
| Well, read the link again: the sanctions include a list
| of names, whose assets are frozen, who can't travel in EU
| and companies that have the same fate.
|
| Economic sanctions are the most effective non-military
| actions states can take against each others.
|
| Short of military invasion what do you suggest EU does?
| [deleted]
| dekoruotas wrote:
| This has also been set in motion:
| https://i.redd.it/elts5rgbg0171.jpg
| motives wrote:
| Worth noting that the EU has banned entire nations (such as
| Kazakhstan and others) from flying in EU airspace before for
| not meeting safety expectations. It is absolutely within
| possibility to ban Belarus for an overt Chicago convention
| violation.
| aphextron wrote:
| >It is absolutely within possibility to ban Belarus for an
| overt Chicago convention violation.
|
| EU did the same thing in 2013 by forcing the Bolivian
| president's plane to land in an effort to catch Snowden.
| They have no moral or legal standing here whatsoever.
|
| https://euobserver.com/justice/120734
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Maybe no moral standing, but they still have legal
| standing.
| ryanlol wrote:
| This wasn't even remotely similar.
|
| Those EU countries didn't allow the plane into their
| airspace, encouraging it to land in a third country to
| refuel.
|
| Belarus called in a fake bomb threat and used their
| fighter jets to force a passenger flight to land in their
| territory, not to mention the KGB officers on board
| making a scene.
|
| Outcome might be similar, but it's specifically the
| tactics used which make this unacceptable.
| aphextron wrote:
| >Those EU countries didn't allow the plane into their
| airspace, encouraging it to land in a third country to
| refuel.
|
| Seems like a trivial difference. Denying access to your
| airspace comes with the implicit threat of fighter
| interception.
| ddalex wrote:
| In the event that you are not a Russian troll, let me
| explain two key differences:
|
| The Morales jet was warned ahead of time in a legal way,
| not intercepted and forced to land in an unintended
| destination.
|
| No persons from the Morales jet were detained.
|
| One is an lawful act (perhaps imoral in some way) , and
| one is an arbitrary act outside of any lawful framework .
| I hope this clears the confusion.
| SpaceRaccoon wrote:
| Morales plane was searched. If Snowden was on it, he
| would have been detained.
|
| It's not that Belarus' actions are admissable. It's that
| the West is acting in a hypocritical way.
|
| If Belarus had as much power as the US, they surely would
| have followed the same route and forced all the
| surrounding nations to close their airspace. The end
| result would be the same.
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| The same end result achieved by legal or illegal means is
| more than enough difference. One is performed by the
| consent of many, the other by thuggery of few.
| ddalex wrote:
| It was searched according to the local law where it
| landed. Nobody forced them to land in Austria - could
| have just as easily returned to Moscow.
|
| The stark difference between the way the West does it is
| that you have a choice whenever to comply or pick an
| alternative, whereas Belarus left no choice.
|
| EU, as a matter of routine, forbids certain persons from
| entering their airspace, has refused entry countless
| times to planes (some of them airborne) based on
| passenger manifests. Nobody would have batted an eye if
| Belarus would have done the same.
|
| Pointing a gun (armed MiG fighter) at a civilian airplane
| based on who is a passenger using a deceptive pretext,
| outside laws and regulations, is several orders of
| magnitudes worse than lawful application of rules. If you
| fail to see why, read about habeas corpus.
| jopsen wrote:
| It a huge difference... You're suggesting there is a
| conspiracy a foot. When in practice it's quite likely
| France, Spain, etc. just denied access because then the
| diplomatic hot potato wouldn't be theirs :)
|
| And I'm hindsight Austria probably regrets they didn't
| deny access too, because then the potato wouldn't have
| landed on their soil.
|
| It's not very bold to say: "pass don't involve me", but
| it's not necessarily a conspiracy to intercept a plane.
| That would have to involve a lot of people, and would
| probably leak..
| def_true_false wrote:
| They had a bunch of plain clothes operatives follow a guy
| onto a public flight, fake a bomb threat and scramble
| jets to get the plane to land?
|
| All this whataboutism isn't really bringing much to the
| discussion here...
|
| What next, the West can't complain about human rights
| violations in HK or Mongolia just because US police shot
| some dude (again)?
| nyolfen wrote:
| "whataboutism" is a thought-terminating cliche -- it's a
| directly analogous situation that shows that there are no
| principles or rule-based order, only power. you have the
| power to get away with doing this, or you don't; lofty
| rhetoric is a propaganda measure
| beebeepka wrote:
| Nice red herring. US police executing black people is an
| internal problem. What we really care about are the
| bombs, the pillaging, the coups... The US has no moral
| high ground. Never had it in the first place.
| hulitu wrote:
| No. You don't underestand. Snowden = american criminal.
| America = our friend. This guy = belorussian criminal.
| Lukashenkon - until some months ago our friend, now - our
| enemy.
| Aperocky wrote:
| Only the airlines, not the nation.
|
| You can fly from Kazakhstan on an European carrier to
| Europe. Europe previously have also banned shoddy Soviet
| era airliners that are both incredibly loud, toxic and
| quite unsafe, which is the right thing to do.
| motives wrote:
| I feel this is a fairly pedantic correction, though of
| course you're very correct nonetheless. My opinion is
| that banning all of a nations major airlines from
| operating in your airspace is functionally equivalent to
| banning that nation. Belarus is much like Kazakhstan in
| that the vast majority of routes from its airports are by
| its national airlines. Most of the routes to the EU are
| flown by Belavia (Belarus' national airline)
| https://www.flightconnections.com/flights-from-minsk-msq.
| Aperocky wrote:
| Well, I feel like it's important to point out that people
| can still fly direct from $nation to Europe despite the
| ban.
| varjag wrote:
| Most of flights to Europe are codeshares with Belavia, so
| not really.
| [deleted]
| golergka wrote:
| European diplomats being "strongly concerned" have long
| become a running joke here in Russia:
| https://twitter.com/ISEUConcerned
|
| I sincerely hope that this statement finally gets backed up
| by some decisive action that can put real pressure on these
| dictators, but I don't get my hopes up.
| [deleted]
| cblconfederate wrote:
| That's because EU is too expanded to be able to reach
| consensus. Individual countries are taking action however
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Can individual countries yank airport landing slots? That
| would get attention.
| jahnu wrote:
| There is this reaction in internet communities to demand a
| kind of reaction from a democratic organisation that would
| only be possible in an autocracy.
| tacker2000 wrote:
| As a EU citizen, this is quite hilarious. The EU is so
| toothless it hurts.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Good, so you're in favour of an EU army? Armed invasion
| of Bielorussia to kidnap the guy back?
|
| The geopolitical armchair experts complain more about
| responses than actually giving realistic suggestions to
| give.
|
| (Sure, we can cut Belarus out, and see thousands of
| "Russian tourists" go for a holiday there right after -
| maybe that would be a good response?). And yes, you won't
| see me defending Borrell.
| jeltz wrote:
| I agree. There is a lot of armchair whining here. Are
| people really in favour of an invasion of Belarus?
| input_sh wrote:
| Why are you talking like there's no middle between not
| doing anything and a full on invasion?
|
| From the top of my head:
|
| - Divert EU planes to avoid Belarus.
|
| - Prevent Belarus' aeroplanes from flying over the EU.
|
| - Increase sanctions towards Belarus officials.
|
| etc etc
| toyg wrote:
| Yes, and all of them take time to be put into motion. A
| lot of different parties will have to agree, including
| immoral profit-driven scum like Ryanair. That's what
| democracy looks like in practice; it ain't as pretty and
| orderly as a tyrannical dictatorship, where one guy says
| something and everyone complies right away.
|
| All of that means it's early to complain about any lack
| of European reaction. In some areas there has been a
| strong response already, and it will likely get stronger
| in the next few weeks.
| ridethebike wrote:
| Yes, but, remember mh-17 - the plane with 200 dutch
| citizens that russians blasted out of the sky in 2014?
| I'm sure strong response from the EU is coming in any
| minute now.
| toyg wrote:
| Russia was sanctioned as part of the annexation of
| Crimea, of which that crime was part.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Thanks, yes, these are realistic, and might be in the way
| of being implemented.
|
| (Also probably will get counted as "toothless". That's
| kinda of my point)
| newsbinator wrote:
| Friendly note: people from the country of Belarus call
| themselves "Belarusians" (pronounced like "bela-roo-
| sians", not like "bela-russians"), and take offence at
| the term "Bielorussia".
| lampington wrote:
| That's interesting! From my (admittedly very weak)
| understanding of Cyrillic, I'd expect Belarus' to be
| pronounced with a "y" sound as part of the "e", similarly
| to the vowel at the start of El'tsin (Yeltsin).
|
| Presumably that's because of a lack of orthographic
| knowledge on my part... or is it something more subtle
| (say, the belorusian language differing from Russian)? I
| have a vague memory of languages in the former Yugoslavia
| being either "ekavsky" or "ijekavsky".
| hadrien01 wrote:
| This might be a simple mistranslation; in many Romance
| languages, Belarus is called 'Bielorussia'.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Noted and fixed, as the other commenter noted it was the
| wrong language (and yes the romance languages call it
| something like Bielorussia, not much that can be done
| about that, sorry)
| input_sh wrote:
| Couldn't agree more. The pattern is basically:
|
| 1. High-ranking official says they're
| "gravely/deeply/very concerned" within the first 24-48h.
|
| 2. Some EU parliament member mentions the problem within
| two or three weeks, shaming other members. A clip of this
| few minutes long speech gets shared all over social
| media.
|
| 3. Absolutely nothing happens until everyone forgets
| about the issue.
|
| Over and over again, issue after issue, day after day.
| queuebert wrote:
| Is this better or worse than the US pattern of sanctions
| and drone strikes?
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Would you prefer a strong, centralised EU government with
| a strong leader (aka dictator)?
|
| Well, I don't.
|
| But this is the only way to take direct action - as the
| individual members are not of a single mind.
| oytis wrote:
| Democracies can be capable of quick direct action too.
| See U.S. esp. U.S. some 50-70 years back. Democracy is no
| excuse for being inefficient, if democracies don't find a
| way to protect their values and interests, they will
| eventually be replaced by more efficient states
| toyg wrote:
| Ah yes, the glory days of "quick direct action" in
| Vietnam and Cambodia. What fun was had by everyone! What
| progress was achieved! We should totally long for that.
| oytis wrote:
| These are examples of unsuccessful wars, although we
| don't know how many times the possibility of American
| intervention prevented USSR from starting theirs. Korean
| war was partially successful though, the whole Korea
| could look like North Korea if US didn't intervene
| toyg wrote:
| I think the US has demonstrated enough "possibility of
| intervention" since 1991, wouldn't you agree...? Kuwait
| is "free" but Iraq is lost to Iran, Afghanistan and
| Rwanda are still a mess.
|
| Guns don't solve everything.
| oytis wrote:
| I would consider intervention in Yugoslavia pretty
| successful actually, instead of genocidal nationalist
| dictatorship we have a couple of democracies - not
| without their problems, but still no comparison to
| Milosevic regime.
|
| Interventions in Iraq, Lybia and Syria can be seen as
| failures if we consider the bold goal to bring democracy
| to the Middle East. But at least these countries don't
| attack other countries any more - ISIS as evil as it is
| can't cause as much harm as these could.
|
| In any case I guess with Eastern Europe it's more likely
| to work like it did in Yugoslavia than in Middle East.
| Belarus has really strong civil society, all they are
| missing is really some guns.
| toyg wrote:
| Yugoslavia was screwed up in the first place by foreign
| countries sponsoring separatists in Slovenia and Croatia.
| When that predictably turned out to be a terrible idea,
| "we" then decided to solve it with bombs, and while doing
| it we came pretty close to massive escalation with the
| Russians. We barely mopped up a mess of "our" own making,
| and it's still a mess down South. "Successful" is not a
| word I would use.
|
| Lybia is more of a mess than under Qaddafi, which means
| the issues with migration to Europe have worsened and the
| Lybians themselves are worse than they were. Same for
| Iraq. I won't get into Syria since that wasn't really a
| straight military intervention.
|
| Yea, what Belarus really needs now is a good civil war,
| so that Putin can annex more territory on one side and we
| can create a new border that will be forever disputed.
| Or, as alternative, we can have them be the casus belli
| for thermonuclear war between NATO and Russia, that will
| work great.
|
| Or you know, we can wait. Worst case scenario, Lukashenko
| sooner or later will die. Best case, enough of his
| security apparatus will decide he's not worth propping up
| anymore. Either way, no guns required.
| supportlocal4h wrote:
| I was just explaining to my children that there was a
| time when the USA government employed censors (an actual
| job title) to control television content.
|
| Much that the USA was or did 50-70 years ago was
| decidedly not democratic and not their proudest moment.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "centralised EU government with a strong leader (aka
| dictator)?"
|
| Those are the only two options? Like how you can either
| have people dying because they cant afford a surgery, or
| you become EUSSR?
| jopsen wrote:
| Sometimes it's the slow and steady diplomacy that affects
| the biggest change over time.
|
| What good is quick action going to do?
|
| It might be better to let this guide trading policies in
| the future.
| avereveard wrote:
| for the guy that's being detained (or worse) right now
| every minute kind of counts
| jopsen wrote:
| It's cold, but in the long run one person probably
| doesn't matter that much.
|
| No offense to Archduke Franz Ferdinand, but he probably
| wasn't worth trouble :)
| salex89 wrote:
| It has been a joke outside of Russia, also... I share your
| hope.
| def_true_false wrote:
| Considering the recent revelations that Russia is literally
| blowing shit up in NATO countries (Bulgaria, Czechia) and
| EU and NATO's lack of response, this will most likely not
| result in any meaningful reaction either.
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| What is the probability of this account being owned by
| Russian government?
|
| I would say 99% and you're just perpetuating the same
| propaganda.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Golergka has been here longer than you and has a much
| larger online footprint than you do. The chances of you
| being a propaganda account are larger than theirs.
| Besides the obvious rule violation I think you should
| probably apologize. Flagging this comment.
| gostsamo wrote:
| No, much smaller. I would agree that the EU's foreign
| policy is a disaster because of traditionally corrupted
| elites. The fact that the russian elites are even more
| corrupted is not an excuse.
| ols wrote:
| EU doesn't have a joint foregin policy. Foregin relations
| is still an intergovernmental matter.
| ols wrote:
| ,,The Common Foreign and Security Policy [...] deals only
| with a specific part of the EU's external relations,
| which domains include mainly Trade and Commercial Policy
| and other areas such as funding to third countries, etc"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Foreign_and_Security
| _Po...
| gostsamo wrote:
| This is a random result when you search for Borrell in
| Moscow. Look for his behavior in Turkey if you want some
| more examples of how random this guy is while he is
| considered an EU representative. His position requires
| for him to coordinate responses of the 27, but he is just
| wandering around wasting time and resources. As far as
| the EU is an economic powerhouse, letting dictators do
| whatever they want while allowed access to the market is
| making him irrelevant.
|
| https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-
| europe/news/borrell-...
| toyg wrote:
| The HR post is a bit of an in-joke in European circles.
| It's being given to 2nd-rate European politicians who
| like to travel, and has zero effective power. The hard
| decisions are all taken among NATO members and are then
| ratified in the European Council.
|
| Sadly this is one of the current issues of the EU
| project, nation-states flatly refuse to hand over
| anything related to defense. It's a great victory for the
| US.
| ols wrote:
| Some EU member states (Hungary, Poland) are very much
| against handing over any diplomatic power to the High
| Representative. Hungarian government is basically acting
| as a Putin proxy here and Polish ruling party feeds on
| constant conflict.
| petre wrote:
| No, they're not a Putin proxy. What they're doing is
| literally pissing against the wind. A recent example:
| Hungary has bought vaccines from Russia and China which
| are not approved by the EMA. Now their recipients are
| basically not recognised as vaccinated and will face
| travel issues.
| gostsamo wrote:
| I agree. At the same time Borrell has enough independence
| to make him a distinct face. He decides where he goals,
| what to say, how to behave when the EU is being mocked.
| Even if you say that he is just a glorified PR, he is an
| awful PR.
|
| It looks that I'm picking on him, but he is just a very
| good example. I can talk a lot about others, but this
| thread is politicized enough already.
| gostsamo wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Representative_of_the_
| Uni...
| toyg wrote:
| Yeah, the HR role has been systematically sabotaged since
| its inception, by way of appointing weaker and weaker
| nominees and starving it of any real power. At the moment
| it's a glorified PR position, with no decisional power
| whatsoever. Javier Solana effectively lost the battle for
| being the EU "foreign minister" and since then it's all
| been about individual member states.
|
| Chances are this will not change until there is a serious
| rethinking of the European role in NATO. As long as the
| big decisions are taken there, there is no real role for
| an EU "ministry" beyond trade interests.
| avereveard wrote:
| as it should be, the EU states act collectively at most
| trough NATO and the current decade EU so focused on being
| the political voice of its members is something being
| tacked on against the initial premise by which its
| members came together; the EU should always had been an
| economic union first to combat the tremendous advantage
| of the internal market that both USA and China enjoy and
| nothing more.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Why would a russian troll argue for stronger action
| agains russian allies?
| vbezhenar wrote:
| An excerpt from HN rules:
|
| Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing,
| shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It
| degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're
| worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll
| look at the data.
| golergka wrote:
| Click on my username and go through my latest comments.
| If I'm a Russian propaganda troll, I must be a really
| elaborate one.
| simonh wrote:
| This is where professional politicians need to learn a
| lesson from the Great Orange One. If Buttigieg had just
| answered "No, I don't think our passenger planes are safe
| over Bellarus anymore, and I'm going to do whatever it
| takes to protect the safety of US citizens flying in
| Europe", that would have been fine.
| ruairispain wrote:
| The difference here is the European politicians will be
| scared shitless if they fly over a country where they think
| they might get arrested.
|
| Politicians scare easily and will protect themselves. If
| journalists can be arrested so can politicians.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| I know that people can joke about the west in Russia but
| are people allowed to make jokes about their own government
| in Russia and in the associated eastern european states?
|
| Is it like China yet? I'm guessing not as there's no
| visible list of banned words and phrases, but we don't see
| (in HN) much criticism of Russia, Belarus from there, just
| attacks on the hypocrisy of the West.
|
| Do you see it headed towards China, where no internal
| criticism is allowed?
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| > are people allowed to make jokes about their own
| government in Russia and in the associated eastern
| european states?
|
| What "associated astern european states" do you mean?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Belarus probably serves as a decent example.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| Belarus aside, which ones? Because I can't think of any.
|
| Seriously, it's been over thirty years since the end of
| Cold War and people still think there are some eastern
| European states associated with Russia... Almost all of
| them are in the EU now with the notable exception of
| Ukraine which is in a state of de facto war with Russia.
| Even Lukashenko has a bitter-sweet relationship with
| Putin.
| petre wrote:
| There's still Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaidjan.
| Technically, the Caucasus region is still in Europe.
| def_true_false wrote:
| I've seen some consider Kazakhstan to be a part of
| Europe. I suspect the region stretches, depending on the
| speaker, far enough east to encompass the speaker's
| country, regardless of its location (but no further).
| petre wrote:
| Kazahstan is in Central Asia probably because it's so
| big. Even their timezones are prefixed with Asia. The
| Caspian Sea and the Ural Mountains are the eastern limits
| of Europe, so everything on the Caspian's west bank is in
| Europe. Astrakhan is in Europe for instance.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| Of these, Georgians are as anti-Kremlin as one could be,
| they were at open war against Russia in 2008. Armenia is
| a pro-European democracy. Azerbaijan, probably the least
| democratic of these, doesn't long for Kremlin either. In
| general, all eastern-European countries were happy to
| become independent from Russia and there is no reason for
| them to choose Russia over the EU.
|
| So one would never refer to them as "Russia and
| associated eastern european states" because, frankly
| speaking, Kremlin has no friends in Eastern Europe. (I
| specifically differentiate between Kremlin with its cold-
| blooded war crimes, and Russian people, who are normal
| nice folks and are a significant part of the total
| population of Eastern Europe.)
| ceejayoz wrote:
| How will you know if the answer to this is honest or
| censored, though?
| thinkingemote wrote:
| For the Chinese you can tell when they cannot even refer
| to, say or admit certain things: e.g. massacres. But they
| would say "we are not being censored"
|
| For China and Russia, etc, it feels as if by mocking the
| hypocrisy of the West they are naively assuming that
| there's no such criticism from within the West.
|
| I think this is revealing but I might be wrong.
| kofejnik wrote:
| > For the Chinese you can tell when they cannot even
| refer to, say or admit certain things: e.g. massacres.
| But they would say "we are not being censored"
|
| It is exactly the same in Russia, you may not mention
| certain historical facts at all, e.g. Germany-USSR
| cooperation during 1939-1941
| nzmsv wrote:
| That's why there is a Russian language Wikipedia article
| about said cooperation: https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/D
| ogovor_o_nenapadenii_mezhdu_... and that article cites a
| number of print books.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| To be fair, that's likely neither hosted in Russia nor
| exclusively edited by Russian residents.
|
| The Chinese Wikipedia has an article on the 1989
| Tienanmen Square massacre, for example. I would assume
| it's not available in China. https://zh.wikipedia.org/wik
| i/%E5%85%AD%E5%9B%9B%E4%BA%8B%E4...
| YarickR2 wrote:
| Well, this is fine example of so-called "lie", plain and
| simple. You may mention it, and often it is being
| mentioned by all kinds of media. Things that really are
| frowned upon are highly controversial topics like alleged
| mass raping by the Red Army in Germany during WW2 . Other
| than that, no holds are barred, and things are discussed
| freely; I'd say hot topics are more frequent in Russian
| media than in the US one ; but clearly hotness and level
| of controversy is different in two blocs
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It seems you're quibbling on _which_ topics can 't be
| talked about, not that there are some.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Many countries have forbidden topics. Try to question
| whether holocaust was real in EU.
| def_true_false wrote:
| Alleged?
| kofejnik wrote:
| if you're still in Russia, try posting some photos of
| 1939 Brest-Litovsk parade on your VK page, we'll watch
| from afar how it goes for you
| nzmsv wrote:
| Like this? https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parad_vermakhta_
| pered_chastiami_R...
| little_panda wrote:
| As a native Russian I do remember learning about the said
| cooperation in school in the 2000s
| golergka wrote:
| You can google my username, and get my social network
| accounts for the last 20 years, and a lot of details me
| and even my family, wikipedia article about my
| grandfather and his history in USSR, and so on. And then
| ask yourself if state propaganda would go to such trouble
| for a couple of comments. It's not doxing, I wouldn't use
| it if I wasn't completely okay with that.
| gostsamo wrote:
| It is a crime to make caricatures of Vladimir Putin.
|
| Someone is downvoting this comment to death, so I'm
| sharing the story for the brave and curious.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/04
| /05...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It's also apparently not advisable to beat him in ice
| hockey.
|
| https://deadspin.com/vladimir-putin-scores-eight-goals-
| in-ru...
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Pikabu is one of the most popular Russian websites
| (something like Reddit). Here's search results of Putin
| caricatures: https://pikabu.ru/tag/%D0%92%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%
| B4%D0%B8%D0%BC%D...
|
| It might be a crime, but it's not enforced enough,
| obviously.
| vimy wrote:
| The real reason for that law is probably to use it as a
| tool against dissidents.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| > I know that people can joke about the west in Russia
| but are people allowed to make jokes about their own
| government in Russia and in the associated eastern
| european states? Is it like China yet?
|
| Yes, plenty of people inside those countries do not like
| regime and openly discuss it on public internet websites.
| I don't know about China situation so I can't make a
| direct comparison. If you're very popular blogger and
| you'll make direct insults to Putin (or any other person
| with high position), you might be fined or even jailed,
| there are laws prohibiting insults against people, but
| those cases are very rare. And nobody hunts ordinary
| people.
|
| > I'm guessing not as there's no visible list of banned
| words and phrases, but we don't see (in HN) much
| criticism of Russia, Belarus from there, just attacks on
| the hypocrisy of the West.
|
| Huh? HN is pretty much against Russia, Belarus, etc.
| Those who try to defend usually are heavily downvoted and
| labeled as kremlin bots.
|
| Anyway people usually are gathered with similar
| viewpoints. Any outsiders are expelled quickly. I know
| web forums, where most of people are holding pro-Russian
| viewpoint and I know web forums, where most of people are
| holding pro-West viewpoint. But I know no webforum with
| balanced opinion. I think that for US people Republicans
| vs Democrats might be a close analogy.
| jiofih wrote:
| > If you're very popular blogger and you'll make direct
| insults to Putin (or any other person with high
| position), you might be fined or even jailed
|
| > nobody hunts ordinary people
|
| Unless they have something bad to say about the regime.
| These don't add up, are bloggers not ordinary people? How
| can you be ok with this?
| vbezhenar wrote:
| > Unless they have something bad to say about the regime.
|
| That's not true.
|
| > are bloggers not ordinary people?
|
| No, they're influencers.
|
| > How can you be ok with this?
|
| Why wouldn't I be ok with this? Nobody should be allowed
| to insult anyone.
| struxure wrote:
| Criticism is allowed unless you have ambitions to work in
| government. Critique of the government has become
| actually quite common in the Russian stand up comedy
| scene. There are some exceptions, like you cannot show
| any public disrespect to the Head of the Chechen Republic
| Ramzan Kadyrov (you can google how people apologise to
| him).
|
| Edit (forgot to mention): also, participating in anti-
| government protests often results in people losing their
| jobs or being expelled from the universities
|
| Edit 2: also, there is an ongoing crisis with the
| independent media: the Russian government is trying to
| suffocate the independent news outlets by classifying
| them as foreign agents (which has pretty bad practical
| outcomes for the news outlet)
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| > participating in anti-government protests often results
| in people losing their jobs or being expelled from the
| universities
|
| This is quickly becoming the situation in the US if you
| criticize popular political movements.
| struxure wrote:
| Not exactly... In the US, organizations use this form of
| self-censorship to prevent a potential backlash from the
| public, whereas in Russia, the bans are direct orders
| from the government and the employers simply don't have
| any choice.
| hedora wrote:
| Often, there is less practical difference than I'd hope
| for. Look at the credit card networks' sanctions of
| things like allofmp3.com, for example.
|
| If you enjoy audio fiction, or short stories you might
| enjoy "The Revolution, brought to you by Nike". It was
| written by an ad industry insider, and touches on a lot
| of issues regarding corporate self-censorship. (It's a
| few years old, and predates Nike's recent political
| activism):
|
| https://escapepod.org/2018/09/06/escape-pod-644-the-
| revoluti...
| morelisp wrote:
| For example, there have been many documented cases in the
| past few years of people getting fired over supporting
| the BDS movement - or in a few cases, not actively
| supporting anti-BDS movements.
|
| ... oh, that's not what you meant?
| baybal2 wrote:
| You don't know anything.
|
| Few hundred people paid with their lives for speaking
| their mind. Either killed in the most gruesome way, or
| just customarily disappeared.
|
| There are at least a hundred something of journalists
| only who were murdered.
|
| It's a brutal KGB-mafia dictatorship trying its best
| masquerading as a normal country. You will always see
| Russian diplomats on every high nosed UN, and OSCE
| talkshop on human rights, and blah blah blah, and yes,
| they like it more than life to come, and laugh at all
| kinds of your "security summits"
| struxure wrote:
| The question was if people (I assumed a regular folk, not
| journalists and opposition) are allowed to make jokes
| about the government, and I answered to that. Of course I
| know that Russia has no traces of democracy left and I am
| aware how Russia targets high-profile people, including
| journalists. You should be more reserved before telling
| people they don't know anything.
| cannabis_sam wrote:
| No, the question was:
|
| > Do you see it headed towards China, where no internal
| criticism is allowed?
|
| But if you're a russian opposed to Putin you cant't
| really answer that on a western-run online platform..
| (unless you're considered insignificant enough by the
| Russian government, so you can safely be ignored of
| course)
| struxure wrote:
| I answered to this question:
|
| > are people allowed to make jokes about their own
| government in Russia?
| petre wrote:
| Allowed? People would do it anyway. Most Eastern European
| communist era jokes involved _the beloved leader_.
| Russian jokes about politicians and policies are even
| better.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_political_jokes
| [deleted]
| nzmsv wrote:
| I am very worried that the situation is headed towards
| China, or much worse.
|
| And the main reason I am worried is that I can see no
| path towards a peaceful de-escalation. It is a foregone
| conclusion in the West that "Russia = bad" and any
| attempt to say anything counter to that narrative gets
| you labeled a pro-Kremlin troll. Let's see how deep in
| the grey this comments ends up for example.
|
| Think Germany after WW1. Humiliated, defeated country.
| The people of such countries tend to follow leaders who
| promise to make them great again. When they do, they get
| further mockery and isolation. And I think it's been
| conclusively proven that this only breeds more
| radicalism.
|
| But most will read this as "if you are not with us then
| you are against us" and turn up the intensity.
| golergka wrote:
| > I know that people can joke about the west in Russia
| but are people allowed to make jokes about their own
| government in Russia and in the associated eastern
| european states?
|
| That's a tough question. For example, when I was active
| in TikTok (I grew tired of it pretty fast), I've made a
| lot of very critical videos that had a lot of views. In
| one of them, that got almost 100k views, I explicitly
| said that Putin and his gang are usurping power, and
| while the current Russian laws say that it's punishable
| up to 20 years in prison, I think that they deserve the
| death penalty. I did not get in any trouble for that. But
| many others from Russian Libertarian Party (which I'm a
| member of) have, even though they've said much less. May
| be they had a wider reach, or may be it's just random, I
| don't know. And I wouldn't be surprised if a couple of
| years later I'll get 5 years of prison for these TikToks.
| rsynnott wrote:
| While criticism is legal, it does significantly increase
| your chances of falling out a window, if you're in a
| prominent position. Very careless, these Kremlin critics.
|
| Interestingly, critics of repressive regimes exhibit
| _themed_ carelessness; those who were a bit too open in
| Apartheid South Africa fell down _stairs_, instead.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| not like America...here all of our colleges and
| workplaces encourage intellectual diversity and
| expression /s
| chshrct42 wrote:
| Ukraine just closed air connection with Belarus. Latvia sent
| out Belarusian diplomats.
| varjag wrote:
| Right now a broad ban on Belavia flights to Europe is a very
| likely outcome.
| cainxinth wrote:
| The airlines making those decisions have no incentive (or
| likely desire) to punish Belarus or engage in international
| politics.
|
| They just don't want their planes diverted by MiGs.
| stapled_socks wrote:
| I don't think passenger airline companies have the authority to
| close the airspace of a country. That would have to be a
| political decision.
| vertis wrote:
| They certainly have the ability to decide on the route
| _their_ planes take, if not others.
| papito wrote:
| What will increase the costs for the regime is putting
| sanctions on potash sales, which is the primary source of
| foreign currency there. Of course, Russia would just make up
| for it, but they had a hand in this as well, so attach a dollar
| value to this geopolitical hooliganism.
| BelenusMordred wrote:
| > no consequences
|
| MH17 being shot down meant a huge diversion of flights over a
| well trafficked route. It's not huge but the overflight fees
| add up after a while if people avoid crossing your borders,
| effective ATC in most countries rely on these aeronautical
| charges coming in every year.
|
| While the effects might not be immediate and a stubborn
| government can shrug it off, there is certainly long-term
| consequences if airlines make a decision to declare a country
| off-limits for routes.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| Sounds like a good idea.
|
| Though this trick (of capturing a dissident by forcing a plane
| down) probably only works once.
| ShamoBerserk wrote:
| https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/corruption/bel...
| joiewjf wrote:
| Germans: Netherland and Ireland must raise taxes, because it hits
| German businesses if your taxes are too low!!
|
| Also Germans: North Stream 2 should not concern other countries.
| It is our internal business.
|
| So, Germans thinks that they can push their agenda to other
| countries, but no other country can do the same to Germany?
| Double standards and very arrogant.
| [deleted]
| iso1631 wrote:
| But Ryanair havent
|
| https://www.flightradar24.com/RYR7BJ/27cf72bf
|
| FR3340 flying from Pafos, Cyprus to Tallin, Estonia, is about to
| cross from Ukraine into Belarus airspace
|
| A route avoiding Belarus would have added at 56 miles to the 1740
| mile journey, about 3%.
|
| http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=pfo-tll,pfo-EPBP-tll
| cookguyruffles wrote:
| Adding an extra 50 yards to any single Ryanair flight would
| likely bankrupt the company
| wp381640 wrote:
| I doubt that - pre-COVID they were one of the most profitable
| airlines in the world
|
| They're just ruthless in cost cutting to get those profits
| [deleted]
| agilob wrote:
| >likely bankrupt the company
|
| Good, let's do it.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| buy the "No kidnapping" package for an extra cost of
| $169.99/person
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Also known as "don't fly RyanAir".
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| There are companies that would insure you if you needed it,
| but I'm guessing this may not apply to a state-sanctioned
| kidnapping.
| kijin wrote:
| Depends on the state and how much you're willing to pay.
|
| Tier 3, extraction by mercenaries -- pay more for extra
| comfy helicopter. Tier 2, extraction by bribery. Tier 1,
| your captor will be overthrown in a coup backed by a
| foreign government. Not applicable if your captor is one of
| the following states: blah blah blah.
| nemetroid wrote:
| Aircraft don't fly in straight lines in Europe, though. A 100
| (nautical) mile difference is more realistic. Still, a tiny
| detour compared to the Wizzair flight linked elsewhere.
| Thev00d00 wrote:
| Ryanair would sell their own mother to get more profits
| usr1106 wrote:
| What hasn't been mentioned at all is that Belavia/Minsk is a
| major corona restriction loophole. Last year they massively
| expanded their traffic to transport people via Minsk if more
| direct flights were not available. Obiviously money was more
| important than public safety . Lukashenka has stated that Wodka
| helps against Covid-19.
|
| Whether that still holds this year I don't know. I have not
| studied flight schedules for a while.
|
| If yes forbidding Belavia to land in EU countries might have an
| even bigger effect than usual.
| sneak wrote:
| And, yet, we didn't do this to Austria (or any of the other
| countries in Europe that cancelled use of the airspace) when the
| plane suspected to be carrying Snowden (but wasn't, and was
| actually carrying a head of state) was forced down in Vienna
| based on a phone call from the US, to be swatted upon landing.
|
| Only the "bad guys" are terrorists when they do this.
|
| The double standard here in the west is astounding. The precise
| same actions are either non-news or "terrorism" simply depending
| on the state performing the action.
|
| Well, in any case, I take heart in any case that _some_ people
| aren't going to seem to get away with doing this.
| enriquto wrote:
| > And, yet, we didn't do this to Austria (or any of the other
| countries in Europe that cancelled use of the airspace)
|
| France and Spain, notably. It was a disgusting violation.
| toyg wrote:
| Italy and Portugal too. Shameful page of NATO history, that.
| andersson1337 wrote:
| Sorry for posting such empty comment but I find this post most
| important. It's not a victory yet when you win one battle out
| of many.
| 5cents wrote:
| This claim is repeated again and again; yet the circumstances
| and the actual event (there was no forcing down) were very
| different; see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27256946
| sneak wrote:
| A careful reading of the wikipedia page shows the truth.
| Whether you revoke airspace permits and force the plane down
| based on fuel reserves, or scramble fighter jets, the net
| effect is the same: the plane lands before when it was
| planning to, if it wants to do so in one piece.
|
| Let's not split hairs here when the precise same political
| motivation, and the precise same mechanism was used (the
| threat of fighters if the plane continues).
|
| The fun part is that the whole ruse was an Assange trick, and
| without Snowden ever touching the aircraft, Assange got the
| US to tip their hand that they're more than happy to engage
| in such shitty and underhanded techniques, even against a
| head of state.
| V-2 wrote:
| Well - they obviously had enough fuel to simply fly back to
| Russia if Snowden were actually on board.
|
| I'm not saying I support that action - I'm only pointing
| out these two incidents aren't quite in the same category.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| It's also possible to disagree with both actions, which
| handily destroys the "But you did it first" attempted
| defence.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I don't the think the thread was about defending
| Lukashenko's terrorist act, it was about reminding
| everyone that, shamefully, such acts are not limited to
| demented regimes like his.
|
| We are all right to be outraged by what happened in
| Belarus. We should also be even more outraged when our
| own governments,which we nominally have some control
| over, do similar things.
| vetinari wrote:
| It is possible to disagree with both actions; but it
| doesn't destroy "but you did it first" defense. The
| precedent[1] happened and was generally accepted, so
| unless you want to go the _quod licet Iovi, non licet
| bovi_ route, it is supposed to be acceptable defense.
|
| The principal way is to reject that defense for all
| cases, including the first one.
|
| [1] And not just Morales' plane; this happened more often
| than that. Morales and Snowden were just high profile.
| toyg wrote:
| Yeah, the Snowden affaire should have been the impetus
| for a new convention on civil airspace. It would have
| been a good chance to also mop up some of the worst
| abuses post-9/11, and re-commit US and NATO to a
| respectful and democratic future. Sadly the chance was
| completely missed, even after the red rage for the leak
| had somewhat dissipated. And here we are.
| ghostwriter wrote:
| > I'm only pointing out these two incidents aren't quite
| in the same category.
|
| they are the same in motives and principles - in both
| cases a state pressure was applied to extract an
| undesirable to the regime citizen from a plane. Focusing
| on technicalities of the act doesn't resolve the issue
| with the nature of the act - the corrupt state acting as
| a bully to coerce its rightful citizen into submittance,
| with all available means. It shouldn't be a revelation
| that a scoundrel-of-a-state is ready to escalate the
| means to fighter jets sooner than later.
| V-2 wrote:
| _" in both cases a state pressure was applied to extract
| an undesirable to the regime citizen from a plane"_
|
| As I explained - in case of Snowden they would only have
| prevented him from getting to South America. They
| wouldn't have extracted him from the plane. If Snowden
| was on board, he'd simply be flown back to Russia - back
| to square one.
|
| An analogy in this case would be Belarus merely
| prohibiting the RyanAir flight from entering their
| airspace.
| toyg wrote:
| _> in case of Snowden they would only have prevented him
| from getting to South America._
|
| And you know this how, were you working for the Austrian
| government at the time, and were you a member of the team
| who searched the plane?
|
| Chances are that they would have at minimum detained him
| and allowed the US to start extradition proceedings.
| Whether they would have eventually extradited him, is not
| certain; but they would not have searched the plane (and
| sent the Austrian President to talk directly with
| Morales) if they were not minded to detain him.
| [deleted]
| V-2 wrote:
| You seem to have started writing your reply before (or
| instead of) reading my commment in full.
|
| My point was that if Snowden actually was there, they
| wouldn't land in Austria to begin with. Unlike the
| RyanAir flight, the plane wasn't forcefully grounded
| (under a false pretense). It just wasn't let through any
| further, but returning was still an option.
| toyg wrote:
| Because of the constraints on fuel, there was no
| realistic alternative to going down. And again, once that
| happened, the fact the Austrian government sent a search
| party says it all, no matter how hard you want to spin
| it.
| V-2 wrote:
| _" Because of the constraints on fuel, there was no
| realistic alternative to going down"_
|
| Source? Wasn't it a Transatlantic flight?
|
| _" And again, once that happened, the fact the Austrian
| government sent a search party says it all, no matter how
| hard you want to spin it"_
|
| This doesn't contradict nor invalidate my point at all.
| toyg wrote:
| Look around in the various threads, this has been
| discussed and also in the past. The plane had barely
| enough range to make it back home with one refuelling
| stop on the way. NATO countries were closing airspace
| while it was in the air, even going back to Russia would
| have been a challenge having to fly back over the likes
| of Hungary - which by then could well have been closed
| too.
| ghostwriter wrote:
| > As I explained - in case of Snowden they would only
| have prevented him from getting to South America.
|
| on what basis and by what standard? What would happen to
| him if he landed in South America? Would he be able to
| land in South America?
| relativ575 wrote:
| Look, ignoring moral standing, every countries have
| fugitives they want to capture. Talking about motive is
| meaningless. How that being carried out is important.
| Morales' entourage weren't in danger. They could have
| chosen to land in Vienna to send a message for all we
| know.
|
| Belarus disregarded convention and put passengers in the
| harm way. Ryanair's flight didn't have a choice. Simple
| as that.
| ghostwriter wrote:
| > Look, ignoring moral standing, every countries have
| fugitives they want to capture.
|
| if you ignore moral standing, you ignore a code of values
| that, when applied to fugitives of all kinds, allows you
| to distinguish those on the good side from those on the
| bad side. Your effective position in that regard is that
| there are no principles by which people bear
| responsibility for their actions, which is a basis of the
| notion of fairness and the whole body of knowledge that
| we call justice. And if there's neither responsibility
| nor justice, there shouldn't be a concern about the
| incident in the first place, as everyone is in their own
| right to do whatever they want, including forcing a plane
| to land with a means of fighter jets.
|
| Next, to the point of "Talking about motive is
| meaningless. How that being carried out is important".
| Observe that by this standard, in an alternative
| universe, a hitler would have been acquited if, instead
| of gas chambers and concentration camps, people were
| given "vitamins" that would silently kill them in their
| sleep at their homes.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| If they were over Austria, are you sure the other
| countries on the way to Russia would have let them
| through? Or would they have suddenly also refused access
| over their air space?
|
| We will never know of course, but the closeness of the
| situation is still alarming.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| How would the plane have gotten back to Russia from Austria,
| even if it did have enough fuel (according to the Wikipedia
| article, that was not clear to the crew)?
|
| Why do you think Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, even Ukraine
| would not have similarly refused access if the crew had not
| landed in Austria of their own will?
| VortexDream wrote:
| Yes. Because EU countries sent fighter jets and claimed a fake
| bomb threat to forcibly take control of the plane. Get out of
| here with that bullshit.
| pydry wrote:
| Countries that refuse access to their airspace will generally
| send fighter jets if you violate it.
|
| The implicit threat of something going _badly_ wrong if they
| did not land was still there.
|
| And, in both cases it was a dissident committing acts of
| public service they were after. It was NOT a terrorist.
|
| Even if you manage to convince yourself that the two actions
| were in no way equivalent that's not how it will play in
| Belarus. Lukashenko knows that downing Morales plane gives
| him extra moral authority among his people ("this is standard
| even the US does it") which is probably why he risked it.
| VortexDream wrote:
| And yet permission to fly over their airspace wasn't
| revoked while they were in their airspace. If they had
| wanted to do so, they could have. They did not. So I don't
| see the sense in constructing this strawman of "oh but it
| meant they could've scrambled fighters".
|
| If Lukashenko had done the same thing France had done, the
| plane wouldn't have been allowed to enter Belarusian
| airspace. That's not what he did. What he did was far more
| egregious and far more dangerous and threatening.
| pydry wrote:
| _shrug_ The net result was the same - a plane was
| grounded through deception so a dissident could be
| arrested. Nobody was hurt by either action.
|
| I don't think Belarussians are going to split these
| hairs. I suspect also that pro western politicians on
| Belarussian TV will be goaded into defending what the US
| did to Morales. They are now placed in an extremely
| awkward position.
|
| If we then hit the country with sanctions over this
| ordinary Belarussians are going to be bitter about the
| hypocrisy (of which they'll be made fully aware) and it
| will play directly into Lukashenko's hands.
| namdnay wrote:
| Evo Morales' plane? From what I gathered it wasn't forced down
| in Austria, it's just that they were refused entry into the
| airspaces of several countries and the pilots weren't sure
| about the remaining fuel levels.
|
| Apparently the whole thing was a stunt by Julian Assange? Don't
| know how true that is
|
| Definitely a bit dodgy though
| sneak wrote:
| > _that they were refused entry into the airspaces of several
| countries_
|
| Countries that minutes earlier they were cleared to fly
| through, and had planned to fly through. Had they ignored the
| refusal and proceeded as planned? Same ending: fighter jets.
|
| Let's not pretend here that this is different.
| notahacker wrote:
| Clearance to fly through and clearance to make an emergency
| landing due to doubts about the fuel gauge (we have the
| cockpit audio discussing the latter...) are not the same
| thing.
|
| If there was really a dastardly plot to capture the guy
| that wasn't even on the aircraft, they'd have gone for
| fighter jets, not "don't land in our country, land in the
| country you're flying over where a diplomat will be mildly
| undiplomatic towards you [or fly back to Russia completely
| unmolested]"
| ghostwriter wrote:
| One could argue that figher jets were not used at that
| time to keep the pretence of legitimacy of the entire
| episode. And that pretence is important, because when you
| publicly declare that the force is now the standard, the
| most unscrupulous bully wins over bullies with moral
| limits or political liabilities. Belarus, on the other
| hand, in its current political environment has no image
| to lose.
| notahacker wrote:
| One could also argue fighter jets weren't used at the
| time because none of the states involved planned for
| Morales' pilot to identify an issue with his fuel gauge
| and request permission to land, which has the neat
| property of being consistent with the hard evidence as
| well as not involving the whole of Europe's ATC coming up
| with the clumsiest plot ever to detain someone who wasn't
| actually there, particularly significant to Europeans or
| any easier to arrest in Vienna than the originally
| scheduled stop in the Canary Islands
| sneak wrote:
| They swatted the plane with machine gun guys as soon as
| it landed. Let's not pretend.
| notahacker wrote:
| Someone should let the Bolivians know because they missed
| that bit from their accounts!
| user-the-name wrote:
| Very much NOT the same ending. Had this theoretical
| situation happened, and had fighter jets been scrambled,
| they would have escorted the plane out of their airspace.
| They would NOT have forced it to land and arrested any
| passengers.
| toyg wrote:
| That's just speculation. Chances are they would have
| actually grounded the plane instead, because nobody would
| want to risk the plane falling down because of lack of
| fuel while being escorted.
|
| Let's be honest here: Putin and Lukashenko can get away
| with this sort of shit because "we" first showed that
| it's acceptable behaviour. This is the risk of breaking
| unwritten rules on the international stage: sooner or
| later a bad guy will do it too, and you won't have the
| moral high ground. This journalist, and all the others
| who will have to take airspace into consideration from
| now on, are paying for the sins of Obama.
| user-the-name wrote:
| You say "nobody would", but that is standard procedure
| when a plane enters an airspace it is not allowed into. I
| don't see why there would be an exception in this case,
| and you want to argue that, I think you will need to
| actually justify that.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| They could have also been refused access to the airspace of
| other countries sorrounding Austria if they had not chosen to
| land there. We don't know how the situation would have
| evolved.
|
| And at "best", Assange could be the source of the
| (mis)information that Snowden may have been on board - the
| stunt itself was entirely pulled by the governments of
| France, Spain, Italy.
| mopsi wrote:
| Refusing service to a private flight carrying a politically
| sensitive person is very different from hijacking a scheduled
| civilian airliner by threatening to shoot it down if it doesn't
| cooperate.
|
| Refusing service is very common. For example, air routes in the
| Middle East can be very long because of countries that can't be
| flown over due to different alliances:
| https://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/images/print-e...
| enriquto wrote:
| The recent incident is painted in exactly the same light by
| Belarus authorities. They say that the plane was diverted due
| to a terrorist threat. All passengers were safely evacuated,
| and once the threat was cleared, they were allowed to
| continue their trip. During their time in Belarusian soil,
| one passenger was detained, for completely unrelated reasons.
| Of course Belarusian police could not do otherwise than
| detain him, for they were already looking for that person.
|
| As is evident, the whole thing is a bullshit excuse to claim
| plausible deniability. Exactly the same as with the Bolivian
| plane. The only difference is which official discourse you
| chose to repeat.
| fpoling wrote:
| There is an important difference. The Bolivian plane was
| warned sufficiently in advance and had enough fuel to
| flight back to Russia at that point. The Ryanair flight was
| forced to land with a military jet leaving the pilots no
| choice but to comply.
|
| But I agree that what Western Europe did to Bolivian flight
| backfires now badly.
| pydry wrote:
| It's not like Morales told why he was being barred entry
| to four different countries' air spaces.
|
| In both cases the pilot was lied to to capture a
| dissident and in neither case were the passengers in
| danger.
|
| Lukashenko's propaganda will get a boost from this.
| Indeed, it's possibly what emboldened him to try it, safe
| in the knowledge that Europe and the US could only
| condemn it hypocritically.
|
| The West loses moral authority when it pulls this shit -
| not only in their own countries but in dictatorships rhey
| are trying to sway.
| mopsi wrote:
| Morales-Shmorales. No-one cares about the games
| governments play with their private jets. This was an
| unprecedented attack on public scheduled intra-European
| passenger service that every regular person may end up
| using.
|
| This is a whole different category and that's why the
| whataboutism isn't working this time and the standard
| "losing moral authority" talking points sound
| particularly shallow and unconvicing.
| pydry wrote:
| Perhaps not to you. I think they'll make effective use of
| whataboutism on Belarussian state TV and newspapers. The
| similarities make it almost too easy for them.
| mopsi wrote:
| I wouldn't call that particularly effective. Everyone but
| the most braindead vatniks know that's bullshit. Lies,
| lies and further lies just like in the USSR.
|
| No amount of propaganda can mask how shitty the life is.
| There's no reason whatsoever why Belarus couldn't be
| enjoying the same quality of life as their direct
| neighbours in the west, they were at the same starting
| point in 1991 after all. Limited travel is still possible
| and people know very well what life is like just across
| the border. Do the same job, get paid several times as
| much, and without getting molested by government thugs.
| pydry wrote:
| >Everyone but the most braindead vatniks know that's
| bullshit. Lies, lies and further lies just like in the
| USSR.
|
| https://www.rt.com/usa/524710-psaki-belarus-bolivia-
| plane/
|
| RT is already mocking the president for deflecting
| questions about this.
|
| It's likely going to work. The sanctions will backfire.
|
| >There's no reason whatsoever why Belarus couldn't be
| enjoying the same quality of life as their direct
| neighbours in the west
|
| Realistically Ukraine is a closer model for how they'd
| end up if they rejected Russia and aligned more closely
| with the West.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| Be that as it may, the "Somebody else got away with it!"
| line is not a valid defense for anything.
| enriquto wrote:
| > (...) is not a valid defense for anything
|
| I'm not defending the callous behavior of Belarus. I'm
| just pointing that the UE/NATO criticism of it is
| shamefully hypocritical. Both are equally wrong in my
| eyes.
| throwaway210222 wrote:
| > the "Somebody else got away with it!" line is not a
| valid defense for anything.
|
| It actually is, if you are tacitly saying "and we will
| let them them get away with it again, and again, and
| again..." but "these other guys you must help me stop".
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| Monkey see, monkey do. It's not a defence, it's just the
| nature of the beast.
|
| If you don't want the monkey to do something, you better
| make damn sure he doesn't see you doing it first.
| egao1980 wrote:
| In 2016 Ukraine downed Belorussian plane using fighter jet
| threats. Nobody cared.
| https://www.refworld.org/docid/58407f0a4.html
| maratc wrote:
| All the Belarusian authorities need to do is to send the
| detained person on the next flight to Vilnius, as Ukrainian
| authorities have done, and this incident will be over, too.
| proxysna wrote:
| This affects me directly since i am working outside of Belarus
| now and rely on air travel to visit my family, still this feels
| like the only reasonable answer to KGB messing with airlines. I
| am expecting that most planes to Belarus, from EU are going to be
| cancelled and people will have to reroute their travel through
| Moscow.
|
| In general it is terrifying how far my country went down the path
| of turning into another Turkmenistan\North Korea over the last 1
| year+. Belarus was never a great example, of having fair courts
| ot great cops, but now it is just horrible. Half of my friends
| spent some time in jail, over the last year. Some were protesting
| actively, some wore clothing of "political colours" and were
| spotted by cops, some were arrested just because they were
| walking on the street and cops were in the mood to stir things
| up. Courts turned into a show where no matter how you were
| arrested or what was the basis for your arrest, you will get a
| fine and a few weeks (best case scenario - 15 days) in prison.
| Sadly, i feel that things are not going to get better anytime
| soon.
|
| tldr: Donbass and Belarus. Fly around if you wanna live.
| jcaldas wrote:
| Lukashenko will not go down without a fight, and Russia is very
| unwilling to see a color revolution again next to its borders.
| Putin dreams of annexing Belarus.
|
| Couple this with the EU's overall weakness and fragmented
| interests (eg nordstream 2), and it's hard to imagine a good
| outcome.
|
| A few sanctions will come out of this that will make EU
| officials look good and further place Belarus into Russian
| hands (namely, as you wrote, making Belarus airspace dependent
| on Russian airspace). Let's see what the real leader of the EU
| has to say.
|
| If the EU can't stand for the people of Belarus, for the sake
| of freedom and human rights, then it will have once again
| failed.
| fpoling wrote:
| It is not that clear that Russia all that happy about the
| incident. A girlfriend of Roman Protasevich, who is a Russian
| citizen, was also detained and that already caused PR issues
| for Kremlin.
|
| Plus there is even comments from Russia's Duma about how this
| can be damaging for Russia.
| piokoch wrote:
| Protasevich was tracked in many countries before he entered
| this plane, tracked by someone doing that very
| professionally engaging a lot of resources. It is hard to
| imagine Belarus was doing this alone, without Russia
| support.
| varjag wrote:
| No, the head propagandists (RT's Simonyan, Solovyev) are
| ecstatic and can't stop congratulating KGB.
| proxysna wrote:
| No one will stand for Belarus. Sanctions have the effect of
| running Belarus into Russian\Chinese debt pit even further.
|
| Until the military sides with opposition (it won't) there
| will be no changes at all. Even if military gets involved,
| there will be russian "voluteers" (see Russian volunteers in
| Moldova 90, Balkans 92-01, Chechnya 93, Ukraine 14 ) that are
| there to help fight new "junta".
|
| And then it will result in Ukraine II: electric boogaloo.
| Eastern Belarus is de-facto a part of Smolensk oblast' with
| some Russia funded murderers creating an "independent"
| republic. This was played out to death over the last 30
| years.
|
| And don't get me wrong. All while this will be happening, EU
| will be very concerned, that is for sure.
|
| None of this will happen ofc, because all resistance will be
| suppressed with excessive force, at the very start. No
| trials, no judges.
| arodyginc wrote:
| tldr: don't mess with Lucashenko and then you can fly over
| there just fine
| proxysna wrote:
| Yeah sure, state funded terrorism does not affect you until
| it does
| golergka wrote:
| I think that majority of HN readers, being from US and
| Europe, don't realise how many people from the shithole
| countries actually think like that and don't see anything
| wrong with this statement.
|
| And yes, I'm using the Trump's derogatory words here. I was
| born and still live in such a shithole country, and I'm
| incredibly angry and at it and this shithole mentality that
| shapes reality around me.
| user-the-name wrote:
| So today we are making excuses for authoritarians kidnapping
| opposition members, huh.
| trhway wrote:
| >don't mess with Lucashenko and then you can fly over there
| just fine
|
| the world is full of Lukashenko-s. We've all been critical of
| Saudis/MBS for example. What happens if your plane
| unexpectedly lands for some technical reason in Saudi Arabia
| and they check your internet postings? I'm pretty sure that
| that Internet criticism of MBS is a crime in SA. May be they
| wouldn't touch a US citizen, yet they would have no issues
| with a Russian, or any other shithole country, citizen like
| me.
| varjag wrote:
| I'm in the same spot. When I was leaving the country after
| then-"election" in 2006, I had to wait until the engineer I was
| handing the project over to finished his 30-day prison
| sentence.
|
| This year even my ever optimistic friends who were never intent
| to move have been sent packing. The hijacking makes things even
| worse for the unwillingly growing Belarusian diaspora, but
| there should not be mucking around. I advocate for the
| strongest pushback possible, even though anticipating a
| lacklustre response.
| proxysna wrote:
| My close circle of friends, mostly moved to nearby countries
| Estonia, Ukraine, Poland and even Russia. One family has
| returned because they got homesick and being an immigrant is
| generally hard. But no one is planning to stay in Belarus,
| right now you can't be sure that tommorow you won't become a
| criminal without any guilt of your own and it is not getting
| any better.
|
| And anything that hurts regime is worth it, no matter how
| anemic it might seem, in the long run it is all worth it.
| varjag wrote:
| Aye. And in my age cohort noone really emigrates unless
| they are _really_ compelled by circumstances.
|
| But now it appears we're getting some pushback from the EU.
| Less than I hoped (so far), but more than I feared.
| throwawayhay wrote:
| The very sad thing is that there's a lot of firms in Silicon
| Valley that do a _lot_ of business with Belarus, totally ignoring
| the monstrosities of Lukashenko.
|
| Mapbox for example, sources a considerable amount of its
| workforce from Minsk, and they're little better than slaves
| because they can't quit or complain or they'll be sent to the
| mines.
|
| We sit here and say that this kind of behavior is villainous, but
| we happily do business with those who profit off of the suffering
| of others. For shame.
| proxysna wrote:
| > or they'll be sent to the mines.
|
| Are you sure? Any sources? That sounds like bs to me. While IT
| job market is shrinking, even if ppl quit there is still a
| large pool of jobs in pretty much any direction.
| newsbinator wrote:
| > they can't quit or complain or they'll be sent to the mines
|
| Working in IT in Belarus is highly coveted, highly cushy (often
| 4-day work-weeks, company retreats, WFH, etc), and pays 5x ~
| 10x average salary (i.e. you become moderately rich, very
| fast).
|
| If you don't like working for one IT company, you can switch to
| another one.
|
| Some are US-standard crappy Wordpress mills or whatever, but if
| you're working in IT you're not oppressed and you're not lucky:
| you're a person with skills that are in-demand and you're
| getting well compensated for using them.
| eviac wrote:
| https://avherald.com/h?article=4e7d7208&opt=0
| sunstone wrote:
| European countries should now close their air space to any
| flights in or out of Belarus until this guy is surrendered in
| good health.
| abc789654567 wrote:
| I can predict exactly what European countries will do in
| response to this horrible atrocity. They will express the
| deepest of all possible concerns. That's all they'll do. In
| fact that's all they _can_ do. They simply don 't have any
| other alternative.
| joiewjf wrote:
| But Germans love dictators!!! They will never introduce
| sanctions against any of them.
| egao1980 wrote:
| On 21st of October 2016 Ukraine did the same to Belavia flight,
| including fighter jet etc. I haven't heard of any international
| uproar or calls to ban Ukrainian air companies / avoid airspace.
| morsch wrote:
| https://www.rt.com/news/363763-ukraine-belavia-antimaidan-pl...
|
| A pertinent difference is that the plane started out in Ukraine
| and was compelled to return. Still, this seems quite unusual.
| dandanua wrote:
| Lie, it's far from "the same". The flight started from Kyiv and
| still was in the Ukrainian airspace.
| paucharquesrius wrote:
| hi
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