Brussels Faces Off With ‘Europe’s Last Dictator’

Brussels Faces Off With ‘Europe’s Last Dictator’
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko addresses his supporters in Minsk, Belarus, Aug. 16, 2020 (AP photo by Dmitri Lovetsky).

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For decades, the president of Belarus, known as “Europe’s last dictator,” has been a thorn in the side of the continent’s democracies. But the threat Alexander Lukashenko poses to European security suddenly grew more serious Sunday, when his security forces—with the help of a transparently false cover story and an armed MiG-29 fighter jet—forced a commercial airliner flying over Belarusian airspace to land in Minsk in order to arrest Roman Protasevich, a reporter associated with the opposition-in-exile who was on the flight.

The incident internationalized what had been an internal political crisis within Belarus and immediately resulted in sanctions from the European Union and the U.K., including the banning of overflights of Belarus by European carriers and the suspension of landing rights to Belarus’ national airline.

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