A 2021 commercial flight was forced to land by a fighter jet to arrest a journalist
A routine international flight became the center of a global scandal when a fighter jet forced the plane to land in Minsk so authorities could arrest a dissenting journalist.
In 2021, Ryanair Flight 4978 was traveling through Belarusian airspace when local authorities claimed there was a bomb threat on board. A MiG-29 fighter jet was scrambled to escort the commercial plane to land in Minsk. Upon landing, no bomb was found; instead, police boarded the aircraft to arrest Roman Protasevich, an activist and journalist who had been living in exile.
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