Aleksandr “Bat’ko/Daddy” Lukashenka has just muscled into the business of hijacking planes. The mission objective was to snatch an exiled dissident journalist, 26-year-old Raman Protasevich.
On May 23, Daddy’s security services falsely radioed a Ryanair plane, registered in Poland, en route from Istanbul to Vilnius, that there was a bomb aboard. Belarus scrambled a jet which compelled the landing of the airliner in Minsk. Protasevich was dragged out and put in jail. The Belarusian KGB also arrested his girlfriend, Sophia Sapega, an ethnic Russian.
This was a typical Soviet-style provocation accompanied by a disinformation operation.