On Wednesday, when the excitement about the fate of flight FR4978 had moved into the fourth day, Alexandr Lukashenko made his first public statement about the diversion of the plane to Minsk.

For Belarus, the 66-year-old ruler's “dearest”, the current situation is unprecedented: isolation from air traffic is advancing and new sanctions are threatening.

Lukashenko, however, sounded coarse and angry as always, and the functionaries in front of his lectern also sat there, as so often, their expressions petrified, as it were, indifferent.

Because the conjuring of internal and external enemies, "malevolent" in Lukashenko's words, is routine.

Friedrich Schmidt

Political correspondent for Russia and the CIS in Moscow.

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    The dictator provided a new version of how aircraft diversion came about. The report of a bomb on board had come "from Switzerland", namely to the departure airport in Athens, the scheduled destination airport in Vilnius and the airport in Minsk. Lukashenko did not give any details. His regime had previously announced that the information about the alleged bomb on board had come from Athens and Vilnius and had alleged that the plane itself had asked for permission to land in Minsk. To illustrate that Belarus had, as it were, slipped into the matter, state television simply exchanged statements from a dialogue between an air traffic controller and one of the pilots on flight FR4978, so that it sounded that it had been recommended to the pilots by a third party, in Minsk to land while the flight control actually suggested landing there.

    "Hamas or not Hamas, that doesn't matter today"

    The forgery is the result of a publication by the Belarusian Ministry of Transport. The airline, the Irish Ryanair, announced on Sunday that the Belarusian air traffic control had informed about a possible security threat and had given it up to go to Minsk. Lukashenko might now want to counteract this contradiction, but had to accept another one: his regime claimed on Monday that the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas had threatened to detonate a bomb over Vilnius if Israel did not stop firing in the Gaza Strip. Hamas denied it (“not our methods”), and the claim seems strange if only because the ceasefire had long been in force at this point in time. Lukashenko made it easy for himself: "Hamas or not Hamas,that has no meaning today. "

    Lukashenko provided several explanations for the use of his MiG-29 interceptor, which was armed with air-to-air missiles. On the one hand, alleged dangers for Belarus if a bomb had been on board or terrorists had controlled the plane. "Isn't Chernobyl enough for us?" Said Lukashenko, referring to the 1986 reactor accident and the new Belarusian nuclear power plant near the border with Lithuania. Lukashenko implied that he would have shot down the passenger plane if necessary. He said the area's anti-aircraft systems had been put into action, "I couldn't let the plane fall on our people's heads". On the other hand, Lukashenko presented the MiG-29 as an aid to the pilots of the passenger aircraft:If necessary, the military aircraft should have maintained the connection between the civilian aircraft and the air traffic controller. If the pilots had had problems landing, the fighter plane should have brought the passenger plane “onto the runway at Minsk airport”: That was what it said on Lukashenko's own website on Wednesday.

    The dictator also commented on the fact that more and more airlines are now avoiding Belarusian airspace. "If you don't like flying over safe Belarus, fly where 300 people have been brought underground," he said. This was understood as an allusion to the downing of Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine, where an anti-aircraft missile from a Russian air defense unit killed 298 people almost seven years ago. To this day, Russia denies being involved in the incident and presents itself as a victim of a Western conspiracy.