BERLIN, June 3. /TASS/. Lufthansa is canceling flights between Minsk from Frankfurt am Main until June 20, according to a statement posted on the airline's website on Thursday.

"Due to the current situation and in order to ensure the stability of our passengers’ planning, the Lufthansa Group has decided to suspend flights in the airspace of Belarus until June 20 inclusive," the airline says.

Earlier Lufthansa announced that it would avoid flights in the airspace of Belarus until June 3.

The situation around flights to and through Belarus worsened after an emergency landing of a Ryanair plane in Minsk on 23 May. The passenger jet en route from Athens to Vilnius was made an emergency landing at Minsk International Airport after a bomb threat on board the plane had been reported.

A subsequent search after the aircraft had touched down in the Belarusian capital failed to find any information confirming the bomb scare. The Belarusian Investigative Committee opened a criminal probe into a hoax bomb threat.

After the plane landed in Minsk, Belarusian law enforcement agencies detained Roman Protasevich, wanted in Belarus as a co-founder of the Nexta Telegram channel deemed extremist, and Russian citizen Sofia Sapega, who was flying with him. They were detained by the Belarusian law enforcement officers. In the evening of the same day, the plane took off from Minsk and soon landed in Vilnius.

After the incident with the Ryanair aircraft, the EU summit decided to ban Belarusian airlines from flying to EU airports and from flying over the territory of the European Union. It also recommended that European carriers refuse to fly in the airspace of Belarus.