How Belarus hijacked a plane
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 27 May 2021
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On Sunday afternoon, a Ryanair flight to Vilnius made a sudden and dramatic landing in Minsk. In what some have described as state sponsored kidnapping, a prominent Belarusian opposition activist was marched off the plane by members of the Belarusian KGB.
What role has Russia played in this extraordinary episode? And with the clamour of international condemnation, will anything really change?
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Guest: Edward Lucas, Russia expert and columnist at The Times.
Host: Manveen Rana.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | My name is Tristan Redmond, and I don't believe in ghosts. |
| 0:03.3 | Well, that is until I discovered that a faceless woman was haunting my teenage bedroom, |
| 0:08.7 | and that my wife's great-grandmother was murdered next door, killed by two gunshots to the face. |
| 0:15.8 | In a new podcast from Wondry and Pineapple Street Studios, I go where no son-in-law should, |
| 0:21.2 | into the depths of history to ask, did someone in my wife's family get away with murder? |
| 0:26.5 | In all episodes of Ghost Story, add free on Wondry Plus. |
| 0:35.1 | On Sunday afternoon, in the skies above Belarus, a Ryan air flight was suddenly, |
| 0:41.0 | dramatically, forced by a foreign government to land in Minsk. |
| 0:46.4 | What unfolded was described by some as a state-sponsored kidnapping. |
| 0:56.8 | Supersteered. I saw, I looked at him directly into his eyes and it was very sad. |
| 1:03.8 | The man, snatched out of the sky, was a leading Belarusian journalist, |
| 1:08.8 | and the men who frogmarched him off the plane were members of the KGB in Belarus, |
| 1:14.5 | acting under direct orders from their president. |
| 1:17.6 | The really striking point is not so much the audacity of the Belarusian stunt, |
| 1:22.0 | but I think we're paying the price for months and months where we've |
| 1:25.6 | panned it to the Lukashenko regime and indulged it and not confronted it. |
| 1:29.7 | And so Lukashenko thought he could get away with this and it appears that he made Wondry. |
| 1:34.3 | What role has Russia played in this extraordinary episode, |
| 1:38.6 | and amid a clamor of international condemnation, who anything really changed? |
| 1:45.3 | You're listening to stories of our times from the Times and the Sunday Times. |
| 1:49.5 | I'm Manvina Rana. |
| 1:51.3 | Today, Halberler Rousse hijacked a plane. |
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