EU Commission chief: responsible for Ryanair hijacking must be sanctioned

Fury over the forced landing of a Ryanair plane in Belarus has upended the agenda of a European Union summit dinner on Monday, where leaders were due to discuss relations with Russia and Britain but will now also consider punitive steps against Minsk.

"Those responsible for the Ryanair hijacking must be sanctioned," von der Leyen said late on Sunday (May 23) on Twitter, adding European Union leaders on Monday would discuss what action to take.

Belarusian authorities scrambled a fighter jet and flagged what turned out to be a false bomb alert to force a Ryanair plane to land on Sunday and then detained an opposition-minded journalist Roman Protasevich who was on board, drawing criticism from across Europe.

A spokesman for EU Council chairman Charles Michel also confirmed EU leaders would discuss further sanctions.

''Consequences and possible sanctions will be discussed at this occasion," Michel's spokesman Barend Leyts said on Twitter.

The diversion of a plane owned by an EU company that was flying between two EU capitals was "an inadmissible step", the bloc's foreign policy chief said, and it would be raised at the summit.

"The EU will consider the consequences of this action, including taking measures against those responsible," Josep Borrell said in a statement on Monday.

The EU has already imposed three rounds of sanctions on Belarus in response to last year's contested presidential election there, and even before the Ryanair incident had been working on a fourth round targeting senior officials.

Additional sanctions could now include suspending overflights of all EU airlines over Belarus, banning Belarusian airline Belavia from landing at EU airports or suspending all transit, including ground transit, from Belarus to the EU, according to an official for the bloc.

Borrell also said that an international investigation into the aircraft incident "must be carried out to ascertain any breach of international aviation rules".

The EU has trod warily on imposing sanctions on Belarus because of the risk that it would push Lukashenko into even closer ties with Russia.

The U.S. government strongly condemned the forced diversion of a Ryanair plane to Belarus on Sunday and the detention of an opposition journalist who was on board, and it called for a quick meeting of an international civil aviation group.

U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken demanded Roman Protasevich's immediate release and said the "shocking act perpetrated by the Lukashenko regime endangered the lives of more than 120 passengers, including U.S. citizens."

Blinken said in a statement that the United States backs the "earliest possible meeting of the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization to review these events."