European planes skirt Belarus amid fury at dissident arrest

On Sunday, Belarusian flight controllers told the crew of a Ryanair jetliner flying from Greece to Lithuania that there was a bomb threat against the plane as it was crossing through Belarus airspace and ordered it to land.

In this handout photo, Belarus journalist Raman Protasevich speaks to a camera in a prison in Minsk, Belarus. (Belarus Government press office via AP)

European airlines began skirting Belarus on Tuesday at the urging of the European Union, which also imposed new sanctions to punish the ex-Soviet nation’s forced diversion of a passenger jet to arrest an opposition journalist.

In unusually swift action at a summit in Brussels, EU leaders agreed on Monday to ban Belarusian airlines from using the airspace and airports of the 27-nation bloc, imposed sanctions on officials linked to Sunday’s flight diversion, and urged the International Civil Aviation Organisation to start an investigation into the episode some described as state terrorism or piracy.