OTTAWA, October 26. /TASS/. The Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) may review the final report on the Ryanair incident over Belarus on November 12 if it receives all the necessary information which is still being collected, Russian envoy to the organization Sergey Gudkov told a TASS correspondent on Monday.
"The final report may be ready on November 12 if all the necessary information is obtained. The collection of data is still underway," he said. According to the envoy, this decision was made public at the ICAO meeting in Montreal where an interim report on this issue was presented. The Russian representative noted that no analysis has been performed nor any conclusions drawn on the basis of existing data.
According to him, director of the aviation department at the Belarusian Ministry of Transport and Communications Artyom Sikorsky attended the meeting in a video format.
On May 23, a Vilnius-bound Ryanair plane that took off from Athens made an emergency landing at Minsk International Airport after a reported bomb threat. A MiG-29 fighter jet alert crew was scrambled to escort the plane. After the landing, the plane was inspected and no bomb was found on board. The Belarusian Investigative Committee has opened a criminal case into a false bomb alert. Among the passengers on that flight was Roman Protasevich, one of the co-founders of the Nexta Telegram channel, which Minsk recognized as an extremist entity. Protasevich was detained by law enforcement agents once the plane had landed in the Belarusian capital. Russian national Sofia Sapega was also detained together with him. On Sunday evening, the plane left Minsk airport and continued on to Vilnius.
Following the incident with a Ryanair flight, EU leaders decided to block Belarusian airlines from landing at EU airports and flying over the EU’s territory, also advising European carriers to prohibit their airliners from flying into Belarusian airspace. Over 20 countries closed their airspace to the Belarusian air carrier.