Facts versus speculation

Western countries have been waging a major political, economic, and informational war against the Republic of Belarus for many years. Economic terrorism is used in violation of the UN Charter and international law: multiple sanctions have been introduced in order to choke the country and its people by economic means. Provisions of the Budapest Memorandum have been blatantly violated, too. Certain representatives of the West like to refer to it often. According to the memorandum, Belarus voluntarily relinquished cutting-edge nuclear weapons at that time and got nothing in return in the end.

With these words, Belarus’ Permanent Representative in the UN Valentin Rybakov began his speech at the meeting of the UN Security Council. The other day, at the initiative of the United States and Albania, the members of the Security Council submitted for discussion an ICAO report on the incident with the Ryanair aircraft in Belarus in May 2021.

Valentin Rybakov

Valentin Rybakov went on saying that the very establishment of ICAO’s fact-finding team on investigating that case runs contrary to the organisation’s mandate and creates a dangerous precedent in manipulating fundamentals of civil aviation safety. The ICAO report was put together in a rush under the pressure of individual Western countries. It lacks consensus, is biased and nonobjective. Valentin Rybakov stated that Belarus will not agree with the report’s conclusions. The report is based on incomplete information due to the lack of necessary international co-operation, “The report has plenty of errors, inaccuracies, non-aviation and non-objective approaches. It is inadmissible for the report to use information from an anonymous source in the absence of proper technical expert evaluation. In turn, written statements of the true air traffic controller, which the Belarusian side sent to ICAO, have been disregarded. Belarus stated that the audio record allegedly made by an air traffic controller and shared by the USA with ICAO’s investigation team is a forgery and a lie. 

The fact-finding team had admitted that there was no escort, no interception, no forcing of the Ryanair aircraft to land by any military aircraft in Belarus’ air space. The fact testifies that the pilot in command of the foreign aircraft personally and independently decided to land in the airport of the city of Minsk. 

By the way, all these undeniable facts were acknowledged by the fact-finding investigation team and failed to prevent Western countries from blaming Belarus for forcing the plane to land.”
Sanctions against the Belarusian flag carrier Belavia and against foreign air carriers, which have been forbidden to use Belarus’ air space, were introduced right away. At the same time, Western diplomats apparently forgot that Belavia was nearly the only air carrier to transport and rescue citizens of their countries upon their request during the pandemic and total lockdowns.
Valentin Rybakov mentioned another outrageous fact. Members of the Belarusian delegation were ready to thoroughly discuss all these matters during the 41st session of the ICAO Assembly, but Canada didn’t grant them visas, “They were forced to attend the session online. It is absolutely obvious that organisers of this ‘show’ simply did not want to hear inconvenient answers to their possible questions. But even participating in an online format the Belarusian delegation submitted working documents on aviation security for consideration of the session. They were blocked by Western countries.”

It only confirms the desire of the West to force ICAO to operate in a way to suit Western political interests even to the detriment of flight safety.

Valentin Rybakov also told the members of the Security Council about the video that Roman Protasevich, repeatedly mentioned by representatives of Western countries during their speeches, prepared in anticipation of the UN Security Council session. In addition, he offered to get acquainted with it in the Twitter account of Belarus’ permanent mission in the UN.
The diplomat, taking the opportunity, also responded to multiple accusations of human rights violations in Belarus, “In this regard, I would like to remind you all about the illegal sanctions against Belarusian potash fertilisers. Of course, potash fertilisers cannot be eaten, but they are the key to future harvests. A shortage of these products in the world markets — and Belarus, according to some statistics, accounts for a third of their global production — will lead to the death of tens of millions more people from hunger. 

I would like to appeal to those who develop and implement these sanctions: you deprive people of their fundamental right — the right to life. After that you have the nerve to teach us how to respect human rights as you understand them.”

Permanent Representative added, “Sooner or later you will simply be swept away either by your own people or by the millions who will come to you from the countries you are destroying today. These people will come to you not for mythical human rights in your sense, but for a piece of bread to feed their families, their children. I believe you will go down in history not as politicians, but as criminals and serial killers.”

By Svetlana Isaenok