UNITED NATIONS, October 31. /TASS/. The picture of the Ryanair flight incident, presented by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), is far from reality, Russia’s First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, told the UN Security Council on Monday.
He stressed that Russia had taken note of a news briefing by ICAO Council President Salvatore Sciacchitano regarding the emergency landing of a Ryanair passenger liner at Minsk Airport on May 23, 2021.
"The picture of this event and its allegedly objective investigation by ICAO, presented to us, is very far from reality," Polyansky stressed. "We have every reason to believe that the process of so-called fact-finding in relation to what actually happened was nothing more than the Western states’ widespread practice of settling scores with countries they do not like," the diplomat said.
A Ryanair liner, en route from Athens to Vilnius, landed at Minsk Airport on May 23, 2021 after a warning there was an explosive device on board. When the plane landed, it became known that among the passengers on board there was one Roman Protasevich, one of the founders of the Nexta telegram channel, recognized as extremist in Belarus. Protasevich was on the Belarusian authorities’ wanted list. He was detained along with Russian citizen Sofia Sapega.
After that incident, the European Union banned Belarusian airlines from operating flights to its airports and over its territory, and also recommended European carriers to avoid flying through Belarusian airspace. ICAO in its report concluded that the warnings of a bomb on board were deliberately false. Minsk said the report was categorically unacceptable and discrediting ICAO.