The main result of the first day of the European Union summit, which opened on May 24 in Brussels, was a massive, on all fronts, rush to Belarus. The reason - the incident with the delay of the plane of the Irish airline Ryanair. The consequences are economic, political, both for Minsk and for Europe itself. Looking from Russia, one cannot fail to notice the infernal nature of what is happening. The division of the world into our own, who can do anything, and aliens, in relation to whom any punitive measures are appropriate, will still backfire on architects of this order. And let them not say that they were not warned from Moscow.

Excited by the events in Minsk, the leaders of the EU countries decided to ban Belarusian airlines from using the airspace of European countries. So far, we are only talking about a fundamental decision. In the coming days, it will be coordinated and approved by the EU Council at the ministerial level. Also, European carriers were advised to stop flights through Belarus. As always, the first students were found who worked ahead of the curve: German Lufthansa, Latvian AirBaltic, Dutch KLM and some other airlines did it themselves, without waiting for a signal from politicians.

Belaeronavigatsia is a state-owned company that provides dispatching services. Before the pandemic, it earned tens of millions of dollars a year on transit flights. The income of Belavia, which flies to both Europe and Russia, is more modest, but it is also available. On the whole, the contribution of the aviation industry is estimated at 2-3% of the GDP of Belarus. That is, Europe beats Minsk on its pocket. The same goal is served by freezing a package of investment assistance in the amount of $ 3 billion until “until Belarus becomes a democratic country,” said the head of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen before the start of the summit.

And there are also mysterious "additional sanctions", under which anything can be imposed ... Isn't it for this reason that European leaders discussed sensitive issues without phones, tablets and other gadgets? "To ensure confidentiality," said spokesman for the President of the European Council Charles Michel innocently. As representatives of crime somewhere in Sicily. However, it is understandable. After all, only after agreeing on repressions against Minsk, European politicians called on ICAO "to urgently investigate this unprecedented and unacceptable incident." That is, they themselves admitted that they are being punished without understanding.

Compared to the Europeans, their counterparts in Atlantic solidarity - the Americans - look in this story, oddly enough, a little more adequate.

Joe Biden instructed his administration to propose options for bringing to justice the people involved in the emergency landing of the plane in Minsk, according to the White House website.

Until they come up with, until they offer, until they accept ... The unhurried style unusual for the Yankees can only be explained by the upcoming meeting of the presidents of the United States and Russia and the unwillingness to “darken” it, as diplomats used to say in Soviet times.

Quite a reasonable, rational approach.

Sometimes you have to wait so as not to get into a puddle.

The Belarusian case is a classic example of the usefulness of such tactics.

Thus, the demand of both Brussels and Washington to release the founder of the Telegram channel NEXTA Roman Protasevich, formulated immediately after his arrest, now - after the "revolutionary" split - looks completely different. “I continue to cooperate with the investigation and give confessions on the fact of organizing mass riots,” the ex-chief editor of NEXTA said on a video recorded in the pre-trial detention center. And what will happen when he puts in his curators? After all, Protasevich trained at the State Department "Radio Liberty" * in Prague, and then in the United States.

Against this background, the assessments of the situation handed out by representatives of the Russian international bloc sound like examples of common sense. The tone was set by Sergei Lavrov: "We are in favor of assessing this situation not in a rush, not in a hurry, but on the basis of all available information." He drew attention to Minsk's readiness to receive any foreign experts, the main of which will, of course, be ICAO specialists. Their apoliticality and equidistance from all parties to the dispute is a guarantee of an impartial consideration of this loud-sounding, but quite banal, even routine incident.

In turn, Maria Zakharova, whose status can (and very often needs!) Be more furious, recalled that in recent years the world has more than once had the opportunity to observe openly "pirate" actions of the West in relation to civil aircraft. As a rule, there were fewer reasons for this than in Minsk, but everything looked much more cynical. For example, the search of the plane of the President of Bolivia in Austria at the request of the United States and the threat of the military aviation of Ukraine to the Belarusian board in order to detain a passenger. And even earlier - "grounding" at the Palm Beach airport of the personal board of the former Deputy Minister of Finance of Russia Andrei Vavilov. It's time to write a memo.

And if the West's tolerance for Ukraine - its anti-Russian project - has long gone beyond all conceivable limits and it is useless to appeal to that case, then the search of the plane of the president of sovereign Bolivia seems to be an excellent indicator. There were no proposals to discuss the topic, for example, in the European Parliament at that time. But now they wanted to hold an urgent debate on Belarus. "Nobody proposed either parliamentary discussions or immediate closure of the airspace over Austria," recalled Leonid Slutsky, head of the State Duma's international affairs committee, calling it "the most severe manifestation of double standards."

Dmitry Rogozin also gave a clear pass to our diplomacy.

He told how in 2014, being in the status of the representative of the President of the Russian Federation in Transnistria, he himself found himself in a similar situation: because of the US sanctions, the authorities of Romania and Bulgaria tried to forcibly land his plane at their airfields.

And in 2017, Poland simply closed its airspace after learning that a Russian official was flying.

“It is shocking that the West calls the incident in the airspace of Belarus“ shocking ”... The blood and suffering of millions around the world knocked out the stool with which they preached from under the Western demagogues," Maria Zakharova summed up, as if she were sentenced.

* Media recognized as a foreign agent by the decision of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation dated 05.12.2017.

The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.