A State-Sponsored Skyjacking
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 25 May 2021
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Over the weekend, an airplane from an Irish airline flying from Athens to Vilnius, Lithuania, was forced down in Belarus so that Belarusian authorities could arrest a dissident. The pretext for the grounding of the plane was a bomb threat from, of all things, Hamas. The incident has produced a major international standoff between the European Union and Belarus, with Russia lurking in the background.
What does it all mean? Can this be defended as a matter of international law? Was this simply a hijacking by the Belarusian government, or was Vladimir Putin really behind it? And what can the United States and the European Union do about it all? To discuss these questions, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Alexander Vindman, the Pritzker Military Fellow at Lawfare; Alina Polyakova of the Center for European Policy Analysis; and Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising. |
| 0:04.0 | To access an ad-free version of the LawFair podcast, |
| 0:08.0 | become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:14.0 | That's patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:18.0 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, |
| 0:22.0 | rational security, chatter, law fair no bull, and the aftermath. |
| 0:29.0 | I think we've had very mixed signals, but I think the smart thing strategically to do here is realize, |
| 0:40.0 | yes, you have to punish Belarus. |
| 0:42.0 | It's not really going to serve our interest going forward, |
| 0:46.0 | because they'll just push them back into Russia's orbit. |
| 0:49.0 | But this really isn't about just Belarus. |
| 0:51.0 | There's a broader problem here, and it's the Kremlin and it's Mr. Putin. |
| 0:57.0 | I'm Benjamin Wittes and this is the LawFair podcast May 25th, 2021. |
| 1:05.0 | Over the weekend, an Irish airplane flying from Athens to Vilnius, Lithuania, |
| 1:13.0 | was forced down in Belarus so that Belarusian authorities could arrest a dissident. |
| 1:20.0 | The pretext for the grounding of the plane was a bomb threat from all things, Hamas. |
| 1:28.0 | The incident has produced a major international standoff between the European Union and Belarus, |
| 1:36.0 | with Russia standing in the background, remaining not that much in the background. |
| 1:42.0 | What does it all mean? |
| 1:44.0 | Can this be defended as a matter of international law? Was this simply a hijacking by the Belarusian government? |
| 1:52.0 | Was Vladimir Putin really behind it? |
| 1:56.0 | And what can the United States and the European Union do about it all? |
... |
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