EU Leaders Hesitant about Russian Involvement in Ryanair Plane Hijacking

Despite the speculations about a Russian involvement in the forced landing of the Ryanair airliner in Minsk, given the importance of Russia, EU leaders who met in Brussels for a two-day summit decided to decouple the issues and concentrate on sanctioning Belarus.

EU leaders agreed to pile sanctions on Belarus and cut off its aviation links on Monday (24 May), furious after it scrambled a warplane to intercept a Ryanair airliner and arrest dissident journalist Roman Protasevich, an act some leaders denounced as 'state piracy'.

"That there is a close relationship between Belarus and Russia, that is known," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday after the EU summit in Brussels, adding that there would be still unanswered questions about Moscow's role in the incident.

According to reports when the plane entered Belarus airspace, passengers with Russian passports initiated a fight with the Ryanair crew insisting there was a bomb onboard. After the landing in Minsk these passengers disappeared.

Merkel said she had told EU leaders she would address the suspicions that his country was involved in the forced landing with Russian President Vladimir Putin if she will have the chance to speak to him.

According to the German Chancellor, EU leaders during the summit discussions had "touched briefly on whether Russia could have anything to do with that but since we had no hard evidence, we passed over that one."

Belarus topped the agenda at a summit that was set to discuss the EU's strategic relations with Russia.

According to EU sources, the two cases have not been linked in deliberations.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, whose country was departure point of the hijacked Ryanair flight, said there was no...