On Sunday, Belarus forced a Ryanair plane flying from Greece to Lithuania to land in Minsk so Belarus could take a Belarusian dissident off the plane and arrest him. Which is just outrageous. There is no justification for this.
EU nations have told their airlines to avoid flying through Belarusian airspace, which seems pretty obvious. But now, Russia is now banning European airlines from entering Russian airspace if they do not fly to Russia via Belarusian airspace. At least two flights to Moscow, one AirFrance and one Austrian airlines, have already been cancelled.
If nothing is done, other than some sanctions on people who don’t count and which won’t hurt, then just wait for what comes next. Because you can be sure the Xi Jinping is watching. China has already kidnapped critics from foreign countries and taken them back to China. If they see Belarus and Russia getting away with this, all bets are off. When we ultimately do have to respond, and we will have to respond at some point, it’s going to cost us a lot more than if we respond promptly and forcefully now.
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ADDENDUM (5/27/21 10:40 pm): In the last sentence above, I said “we will ultimately have to respond at some point”, which is actually not true. We could, as I mentioned here, just take care of ourselves and not worry about other people. That might mean, in some circumstances, that we have to do what others tell us to do. But as long as it isn’t something important to our standard of living, should we care? If we have to not criticize somebody or turn over a person who does criticize somebody, does it make that much of a difference? Each person and each country has to decide that for themselves, but I would remind them of what Martin Niemöller said.
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