Western politicians accused Belarus on Monday of state piracy amounting to a "warlike act", searching for a way to retaliate that would match the gravity of the offence after Minsk forced an airliner down and arrested a dissident journalist.
Sunday's action, in which a Belarusian warplane intercepted a Ryanair flight between European Union members Greece and Lithuania and forced it to land in Minsk, has few precedents, and denunciations were worded in the strongest terms.
Belarus authorities arrested a passenger, 26-year-old Roman Protasevich, whose social media feed from exile has been one of the last remaining independent outlets for news
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