Belarus president defends plane diversion, blasts critics

MINSK: A defiant President Alexander Lukashenko on Wednesday defended Belarus’s diversion of a European flight and arrest of a dissident on board, lashing out at critics at home and abroad.

In his first public statement since the Ryanair flight was diverted and opposition journalist Roman Protasevich arrested on Sunday, Lukashenko dismissed the international outcry the incident provoked.

“I acted lawfully to protect our people,” Lukashenko said in an address to parliament, the Belta state-run news agency reported. The criticism was nothing more than another attempt by his opponents to undermine his rule, he said.

“Our ill-wishers at home and abroad have changed their methods of attacking the state,” Lukashenko said. “They have crossed many red lines and crossed boundaries of common sense and human morality.”

Lukashenko—often dubbed “Europe’s last dictator”—is facing some of the strongest international pressure of his 26-year rule of ex-Soviet Belarus.

The strongman and his allies are already under a series of Western sanctions over a brutal crackdown on mass protests that followed his disputed re-election to a sixth term last August.

European leaders are now accusing authorities in Minsk of essentially hijacking the passenger flight, and they agreed this week to cut air links with Belarus and told airliners to avoid the country’s airspace. The Belarusian opposition has called for further and stronger measures, and the UN Security Council was set to meet behind closed doors later on Wednesday.