I am surprised no one posted about this here, it was all the rage in Western Europe, got a response from the State Dept ghouls, and even trended on Twitter for a while. So, here's the deal:

Today, a flight from Athens, Greece to Vilnius, Lithuania was diverted to an airport near Minsk, Belarus. The plane by now has been let go and it had landed in Vilnius. On board of that plane was Roman Protasevich, who had been arrested by the Belarusian forces.

Before I go into any details, here is my general take: good, impressive.

The arrestee

In the West, of course, this news is being presented as an unlawful and completely bonkers incident, with Protasevich being simply referred to as a "journalist." So who is he and why has he been arrested?

There's a good English-language article about who he is here , but the gist is as follows: 1) He was an editor of NEXTA, a Telegram channel with ~2 mil subscribers at it's peak (last summer), ran from Poland and on Polish, Lithuanian and who knows who else's, probably NED's too, money. The channel was key to coordinating and turning the last summer's anti-govt and largely pro-Western protests violent. They also concocted and advocated for various schemes to bring Belarusian economy down at its' most vulnerable: bank runs, strikes at state-owned companies, etc. 2) A staunch anti-communist and maybe not a nazi per se, but he fought with a nazi Azov division in Ukraine in 2014, as well as during the 2014 pro-western "Maidan" in Ukraine. 3) Worked with USAID-sponsored "news" orgs such as Radio Freedom, there are pictures of him at the US State Dept where he had some undisclosed meetings and underwent some training.

So, a typical neolib pro-Western stooge. He was operating from the Czech Republic and Poland for the most part and I suppose got a little too high on the feeling of impunity. Belarus, to no avail obviously, requested his extradition from Poland already back in February.

How it happened

There was a report, while the Ryanair flight was in the Belarusian airspace, that there might be a bomb on board. (This was over the new Belarusian nuclear plant, by the way). Belarusian Mig-29 and a helicopter were scrambled. ATC requested the plane to land in a backup airport near Minsk (or it was the pilots' idea, this is still not clear but also doesn't matter at all, see the next paragraph). Passengers were searched, there was a bunch of fire engines, dogs, etc. Anyway, in the end, Protasevich was detained and the plane went on its way.

What really happened

The info is still fresh and there is a lot of contradictory messaging, even from the official Belarusian channels. There was no bomb and that was very clearly an excuse to land the plane in Belarus, whichever way you wanna look at it. What it really was is a very well executed operation by the KGB to apprehend Protasevich. Reportedly, 6 other people, 4 Russians and 2 others I don't remember, also never landed in Vilnius after the plane was released. One of them is Protasevich's gf, the others--unclear at this point, there had been no explanation from Minsk. It is also not yet clear whether this is true. Awaiting more information on that front.

Western reaction

Hysteria. It even reached Twitter, but still, mostly was limited to certain European countries' "concerns" and condemnations. Some called it "hijacking." They have short memories. In 2013 Evo's plane was landed in Austria in a similar fashion, because the US suspected Edward Snowden could be on board. In 2016 Ukraine diverted a Belarusian plane under a threat of scrambling jets and without explaining any reasons for why the plane was being diverted. No international outrage in those two cases, of course. There are more examples like that, but we all know the western double standards.

My take, as a Belarusian who used to be a neolib fighting my govt, but who since recovered

First of all, really ballsy of Belarus. A small country snubbing the west like this. Of course they knew there would be a strong backlash, at least in the western media (symbolic sanctions forthcoming, no doubt). A very strong message to the "opposition" that's hiding in the west, at the western taxpayers' expense, trying to topple Belarusian "regime." It is funny also, that Tikhanouskaya, the Guaido of Belarus, reported flying the same route before and not being detained. Must feel bad, realizing one's unimportance. But she's done wonders, like Guaido, again, discrediting this whole pro-western anti-Lukashenka movement, so she's more useful being free.

There are many more small details about this case. I'll be happy to answer questions, about this or the general situation in Belarus currently. The country has become a new vector of presure against Russia, so if you are wondering "Why should I care?" this is why--it's an ancillary but still very important player in the US's war against Russia.