Belarusian leader defends flight ‘hijack’ to arrest journalist

President Alexander Lukashenko said a claim that the fighter jet forced the Ryanair plane to land was an “absolute lie” and defended the diversion of the flight as a necessary response to a bomb threat.

Alexander Lukashenko (Sergei Sheleg/BelTA Pool Photo via AP, File)

Belarus’s authoritarian president has defended his action to divert a flight that triggered bruising European Union sanctions, and accused the West of waging a “hybrid war” to “strangle” the ex-Soviet nation.

On Sunday, Belarusian flight controllers ordered a Ryanair plane flying over the country to land because of a reported bomb threat, and a fighter jet was scrambled to escort it to Minsk, just before it was to land in Vilnius, Lithuania.