The landing in Belarus of a Ryanair plane with Protasevich on board was personally supervised by a KGB agent: new details of the case

The air traffic controller of the airport in Minsk, who on May 23 landed the plane with Roman Protasevich on board, said that the actions of the control tower at that moment were directed by a KGB officer of Belarus. Writes about it The New York Times.

Photo: Shutterstock

The dispatcher managed to escape to Poland. Since then, he has provided detailed evidence that the Ryanair plane was targeted at a fake bomb threat as part of an operation to arrest Roman Protasevich organized by Belarusian intelligence.

Asked about the desertion, Stanislav Zaryn, director of Poland's National Security Department, declined to comment on the details, but said Polish officials investigating what he called Ryanair's "hijacking" had managed to "obtain a direct witness account of these actions."

He clarified that, according to the witness, the officer of the Belarusian intelligence and security service of the KGB was at that time in the control room and "at the decisive moment took control of the air traffic control service." Throughout the entire incident, the Belarusian officer "maintained constant telephone contact with someone to whom he informed about what is currently happening with the plane."

Poland prepares for trial

The defector's version of what happened does not fundamentally change what was suspected all this time, but it helps Polish prosecutors build a solid case against Belarusian officials that can be verified in court.

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Prosecutors named the air traffic controller Oleg Galegov, an ethnic Georgian married to a Belarusian woman. During the Ryanair incident, Galegov, on duty at the Minsk control tower, was responsible for informing the pilot of the plane that there was a bomb on board and that he should stop his flight to Vilnius, that is, land in Minsk for "security reasons."

“For your information, we have information from the intelligence services that you have a bomb on board and it could be activated over Vilnius,” the air traffic controller said, according to a transcript of his conversation with the Ryanair plane released in May by Belarusian authorities. The pilot was skeptical about this.

After reporting that airport security personnel had received an email about the bomb, the pilot asked which airport the warning had been sent to. After 20 minutes of moving back and forth, the pilot was told that the "code is red" (critical situation), and he reluctantly agreed to land in Minsk.

President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko personally ordered the fighter to accompany the plane. According to his press service, Lukashenka gave "an unambiguous order to force the plane to turn around and land."

The subsequent unreported air traffic controller desertion aided Polish prosecutors working on a criminal investigation into the incident.

It also helps explain why relations between Belarus and Poland have become so tense: Lukashenka accuses his western neighbor of conspiring to "rebel" and topple it, and Poland accuses Belarus of ferrying migrants to the border and of "hybrid war".

The air traffic controller from Minsk told Polish investigators everything he knew about the forced landing. This information threatens to reveal the role of the Belarusian security services in what the head of Ryanair Michael O'Leary called "deliberate hijacking."

The independent news agency Nasha Niva, whose website was blocked by the Belarusian authorities, reported that Galegov went on vacation in June and has not been seen since. The air traffic controller's colleagues assumed that he was in Georgia.

Ivan Gerlovsky, deputy general director of the state-owned company Belaeronavigatsia, which is responsible for air traffic control in Belarus, said that the personnel department unsuccessfully called Galegov's mother-in-law in Minsk and tried to find out where he was.

Belarus' security agency, called the KGB as it was when the country was part of the Soviet Union, signed a cooperation agreement in August with the security service of Georgia, another former Soviet republic, which would likely increase the risks for Galegov if he were in Georgia. However, he was in Poland at that time. “He has since left the country,” said one European security official. His current whereabouts are unknown.

After disappearing in the summer, the air traffic controller deleted all of his social media accounts.

European security officials said he initially contacted the US Embassy in Warsaw, but the Americans referred him to the Polish authorities.

Sanctions and Hamas

The forced landing of a passenger plane carrying 170 people sparked outrage across Europe and prompted the European Union to tighten the sanctions it has already imposed on Belarus in connection with the 2020 presidential elections, in which Lukashenko won by an unrealistic margin.

When European foreign ministers met in May to discuss a new package of measures aimed at punishing Belarus, Lukashenko responded by threatening to mobilize migrants as a weapon of retaliation.

Shortly after the European Bloc imposed new sanctions in June, the flow of migrants from Belarus to Poland as well as Lithuania, both EU and NATO members, suddenly turned into a flood as Belarus simplified visa requirements and allowed thousands of people, many of whom are ethnic Kurds from Iraq, enter the previously tightly controlled border zones.

That the Ryanair bombing threat was a fake has never been questioned: an email sent on behalf of the Hamas terrorist group with an explosion warning and cited by the Belarusian authorities as evidence of a real security threat was sent only after the plane landed in Minsk. ... Hamas denies sending any messages.

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The suspicions that all of this was organized by the Belarusian special services were reinforced by the previously unregistered findings of a separate investigation carried out by the police and the General Prosecutor's Office of Lithuania. The investigation revealed that the passenger who got off the plane after landing in Minsk was a Belarusian man believed to have been recruited by his country's military intelligence service.

The man, identified by Lithuanian investigators as Sergei Kulakov, arrived in Vilnius the day before Protasevich flew to Athens on vacation, and then joined the dissident on the return flight to Vilnius a week later.

However, this indirect evidence of the secret operation of Lukashenko's security services is now supplemented by the testimony of the defector and the notes he took with him.

As soon as the plane landed, employees of the Belarusian special services seized Protasevich and his girlfriend Sofia Sapega. Since then, the two have only been spotted at a briefing organized by the Belarusian authorities in June and in videos released by the government in which they confessed, apparently under duress, to organizing "riots."

The opposition Russian news agency Dozhd reported that Belarus had filed formal criminal charges against Sapieha, meaning she could face at least six years in prison.

The whereabouts and fate of Protasevich are unknown.

As ForumDaily wrote earlier:

• The regime of the dictator of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko with a fighter jet on May 23 forced the Ryanair plane to land in Minsk... The KGB officers removed the co-founder of the opposition Telegram channel NEXTA Roman Protasevich from his board. He faces a maximum prison term, although he himself does not rule out execution.
• The Ambassador of Latvia to Belarus was offered leave the country within XNUMX hours.
• Aviation Department published transcript of the negotiations between the Ryanair pilot and the dispatcher of the Minsk airport... Many countries have established an air blockade of Belarus.
• U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) July 8 finally banned the sale of tickets for air travel between the United States and Belarus.
• Who is Roman Protasevich, for whose arrest Belarus intercepted the plane, read in our material.

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The crisis of migrants on the border of Poland and Belarus is getting worse: several people died from hypothermia

Californian who faces jail for participating in the storming of the Capitol seeks asylum in Belarus

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