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Belarusian state airline Belavia will almost certainly face EU sanctions and its planes will no longer be able to fly to EU airports. Neighboring Ukraine also closed the airspace for the Belavia ocean liners.
“Ukraine has closed the sky to us. In Crimea, we have our own sanatorium, where people always traveled, flew. In order not to damage relations, we passed through Ukraine. Now they have closed our airspace,” Lukashenko said.
“I told Vladimir Putin to think about how we could get to Crimea. We will not fly through Poland: they will not let us in either,” added Lukashenko, who won parity status in the West and spoke with the Russian president last week for five hours.
ZUMAPRESS / Photo by Scanpix / Alexander Lukashenko and Vladimir Putin
Russia tore off the peninsula from Ukraine in 2014: the West condemned the country and imposed sanctions on it. Kiev seeks to regain the territory.
Lukashenko also said that he had discussed Crimea with former Ukrainian President Peter Poroshenko, and that the latter had asked him to go there only via Ukraine.
“I want to ask Zelensky: if I want to fly to Crimea, how should I behave? Only through Russia. I will have to ask President Putin to take me to Crimea in some way. In this case, I am completely free and I do not survive,” affirmed the head of the Minsk regime.
The Ukrainian government announced immediately after such a statement that it would react in an instant if Minsk launched planes to Crimea or recognized the peninsula as part of Russia. Penalties are likely to be imposed.
“We will take immediate action against attempts to legitimize the occupation of Crimea, against attempts to establish contacts with the ‘people’s republics’ of Lugansk and Donetsk,” said Emine Jepar, Ukraine’s first deputy foreign minister.
Scanpix airplane / ITAR-TASS photo / Belavia
The diplomat also called Lukashenko’s rhetoric provocative, adding that he reacted very emotionally to Ukraine’s response to the crash landing of a Ryanair plane in Minsk.
Russia’s Nezavisimaja Gazeta said Wednesday that Putin was not trying to pressure Lukashenko on Crimea.
And analyst Alexander Klaskovsky added: “It is simply important for Putin to lure Lukashenko into a trap from which he cannot free himself. It is more important for Moscow to find practical ways to unite Belarus with Russia so that it does not move towards Europe or NATO.
Rather, Lukashenko is sending a message to Ukraine and the West, suggesting that if there is too much pressure, it will recognize Crimea for Russia. “
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