Thread by @akoz33

So here are some of my thoughts of the kidnapping of Protasevich and Sapega and Europe’s and America’s reaction to it. (Some of these thoughts are inspired by @YLatynina latest talk on this subject. She has great name for Lukashenko, she calls him The Agro-Führer).

The first association that came to my mind was Srebrenica 1995. Recall that it was there, during the Bosnian civil war that Dutch soldiers who were part of a UN “Protection Force” handed over 8000 Bosniak men and boys to be massacred by Bosnian Serb army under Mladko Mladic.

The Dutch were lightly armed and outnumbered and the Serbs made threats but it was unlikely they would have actually try to kill any of the UN troops had they offered any resistance. Instead they let them be taken away to be murdered.

The Dutch actually expelled Bosniak refugees from the UN compound, although they certainly knew what the Serbs would do to them. Some of the Dutch witnessed the murder of children and rapes of women without reacting.

This time Potasevich pleaded with Ryan Air staff in the same way as the Bosnians did with the Dutch soldiers. Nobody wanted to listen to him. He and his girlfriend Sapega were practically pushed out of the plane into the arms of the waiting cut-throats.

Then after a break the plane flew to Vilnus without the kidnapped pair, and Ryan Air announced that all was fine.
The Ryan Air pilot and the crew displayed the kind of cowardice that has now become associated with the word European.

One is tempted to say, it is the only one of the vaunted “European values” that actually plays a role in political life.
Apparently the pilot at first attempted to leave Belarusian airspace as soon as possible, he was only two minutes away from Lithuanian airspace.

But when his plane was threatened by the Mig, he completely capitulated.
The former Aeroflot pilot Andrei Litvinov, who became famous when he refused to to let the governor of the Irkutsk region Dmitri Mezentsev onboard

(the plane was deliberately delayed so that the governor, who was late could catch it) said that had he been threatened like that he would have first sent a distress signal indicating that the plane was under attack, would have refused to land without a consul and media present,

and after forced landing would have refused to fly further. Remember how differently behaved the French pilot Michel Bacos in 1976?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Ba…
We, that is Europe (but actually the entire West) have come a long way since those days.

Bacos probably faced a much more real danger. Of course, we can’t be 100% sure Lukashenko would not have ordered the plane to be shot down if the pilot insisted on flying to Vilnus (which was nearer), we only know, say 90%.

So perhaps yielding to a direct threat may be justified this time, but not the rest of the behavior of the crew.

Another thing that comes to mind is that this even should put the final nail in the coffin of the theory that “nonviolent resistance” has the slightest chance

of removing a tyrant like Lukashenko who has already spilled much blood and who has loyal henchmen ready to murder and torture for him (who also have burnt all the bridges behind them).

This idiotic idea (that “non-violent resistance works”) is based on confusing a regime like Lukashenko’s, or Khameini’s, or Assad’s with totally incomparable one’s like that of the British in India.

Some of Lukashenko’s henchmen are actually former members of Yanukhovich’s Berkut. The Berkut, of course, was perfectly ready and happy to mow down crowds but collapsed when the crowd started to shoot back.

Nothing else, will bring the Lukashenko down. In fact, this morning, while listening to anther fascinating talk by the great Edvard Radzinsky, I heard a perfect way to express this. Radzinsky was talking about Jan Gotlib Bloch

(a truly fascinating figure, see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Gotli… ) the father of all the “disarmament and arms control movements”.

When Bloch (correctly) discovered how terrible future warfare was going to become (due to the impact of new technology) he attempted to meet with European monarchs and leading politicians to persuade them to adopt measures, such as peaceful resolution of conflicts

and banning various types of weapons (such as poisonous gas) to avert the inevitable catastrophe.

Only the young tsar Nicholas agreed to see him, and actually met with him several times, once for over 5 hours.
When Nicholas asked his Prime Minister Sergey Witte what he thought about Bloch’s ideas, the latter replied:

it is possible that men will one day decide to act according to the principles of Jesus Christ and the probability that the governments will actually adopt Bloch’s principles is about the same.

However, other ministers explained to Nicholas that a World Peace Conference would make good propaganda so at the initiative of the tsar The First Hague Conference was held on Nicholas’ birthday in 1899. Bloch was invited. So actually Bloch’s work was a success of sorts.

However, by the time the last (sixth) volume of his book was published in 1915, the world was at war and all the things he had predicted were now taking place.

Final remarks. There are “expert voices” saying that we have to separate Lukashenko from Putin and that Lukashenko has in the past often acted independently of Putin and is probably doing it again. Well, in this world things change.

Today the situation is different. It’s very likely indeed that the initiative for this act of outright piracy did not come from Putin but, in the current situation, it is inconceivable that he was not informed or that he made any objections. And why should he?

This is working perfectly for him. Firstly, he will say that he has nothing to do with this, Belarus is an independent sovereign state. Secondly, however, he will watch the West’s reaction - how far will they go? Not very far.

Now, Biden has announced that Belarus will be a topic in his forthcoming discussions with Putin. What could be better than this?

Putin will say that can’t make a sovereign country do anything agains its will, but if the West and especially the US stops being so unfriendly to Russia, he might try to persuade Luka to go easy on his prisoners/hostages.

In fact, China has been using North Korean tyrants in this way to its advantage for decades.

And of course, any further sanctions on Belarus only work to Putin’s advantage as they give him even more complete control over Luka and his henchmen. It’s now only a matter of choosing the most convenient moment and there is no particular need to hurry.