UNITED NATIONS, May 28. /TASS/. Reports that a Russian agent was allegedly aboard the Ryanair flight that made an emergency landing in Minsk on May 27 have nothing to do with reality, Russia’s First Deputy Permanent Representative at the United Nations Organization Dmitry Polyansky told a briefing on Friday.
"Naturally, we were unaware of that flight, and we cannot track each aircraft in the air," he noted. However, any government would have reacted to a bomb scare similarly, proceeding from the need to make people safe, the Russian diplomat pointed out.
"As for the reports that a Russian agent was allegedly aboard the airliner, this is fake news," he added.
"It seems that our Baltic colleagues started to disseminate this fake [narrative]," he said.
A passenger jet belonging to Ryanair, an Irish low-cost airline, performing a flight from Athens to Vilnius on May 23 was forced to make 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 explosives. The Belarusian Investigative Committee opened a criminal probe into a false bomb scare.
Minsk later specified that Roman Protasevich, wanted in Belarus as a co-founder of the Nexta Telegram channel deemed extremist, had been among the flight’s passengers. He was taken into custody by law enforcement agents, together with Sofiya Sapega, a young Russian woman travelling with him. The flight departed from Minsk in the evening of the same day and landed in Vilnius.