Originally published 2021-05-24.
On 23 May 2021, Belarusian air traffic controllers told the crew of Ryanair flight FR4978, en route from Athens to Vilnius, that there might be a bomb on board and steered the Boeing 737 to Minsk. No bomb was found. Instead, security officers removed Roman Protasevich, a 26-year-old opposition journalist who had been living in exile, together with his girlfriend, Sofia Sapega. The episode quickly became one of the most serious attacks on civil aviation rules in modern Europe and led to the closure of European skies to Belarusian airlines.
Below is a clear account of what happened on the flight, why Protasevich was targeted, how governments and investigators responded, and what became of the two passengers who were taken off the plane.
What happened on flight FR4978
The aircraft, a Polish-registered Boeing 737-800 operated by Ryanair's subsidiary Buzz, entered Belarusian airspace at about 12:30 local time. A few minutes later, a Minsk controller told the pilots that the airport had received an email from "terrorists" warning of an explosive device. The jet was at that moment much closer to Vilnius than to Minsk, yet it was directed to the Belarusian capital.
There were 132 people on board: 126 passengers and six crew. After landing, passengers described waiting for hours without water, toilet breaks or phone calls while dozens of security officers searched the cabin and the luggage. The plane sat on the ground for roughly seven hours and reached Vilnius about eight and a half hours behind schedule. Protasevich, Sapega and three other passengers did not continue the journey.
Fellow travellers said Protasevich was visibly frightened when he realised where the plane was heading. Several told reporters he feared he could face the death penalty; Belarus is the only country in Europe that still carries out executions.
The fighter jet and the bomb email
Early reports, including statements from President Alexander Lukashenko's own press service, said a MiG-29 fighter had been scrambled to escort the airliner. The fact-finding team of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) later found that the MiG-29 was tasked with backup communications and the protection of Minsk, and did not approach or escort FR4978.
The supposed threat was an email signed by "Hamas soldiers", demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. Hamas denied any involvement. Investigators found that the message reached Minsk airport at 12:56, after the diversion had already begun. ICAO's January 2022 report concluded that the bomb threat had been deliberately false.
Who is Roman Protasevich?
Born in Minsk in 1995, Protasevich (also spelled Raman Pratasevich) became a prominent voice of the Belarusian opposition as a blogger and editor. In 2020 he helped run Nexta, a Telegram channel that grew into one of the main sources of news and protest coordination after the disputed presidential election of August 2020, when authorities tried to shut down internet access. He left Nexta in September 2020 and later edited another Telegram channel, Belarus of the Brain.
He had moved to Poland in 2019 and later lived in Lithuania. In November 2020 the Belarusian KGB placed him on its list of people involved in "terrorist activity", a designation linked to his role in covering and organising the protests. That listing meant he faced the prospect of a very long prison term if he ever returned.
Why the diversion shocked Europe
Belarus is often described as Europe's last dictatorship. Lukashenko has ruled since 1994, and the official result of the 2020 vote, which gave him a landslide, was widely rejected as fraudulent. Months of mass street protests followed, and thousands of demonstrators were detained, many of them reporting beatings. Leading opposition figures were jailed or pushed into exile.
Against that background, forcing down a passenger jet flying between two EU capitals to seize a critic was seen as a new level of escalation. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, whose capital the flight had left, called it "an unprecedented and shocking act", according to Reuters. Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda wrote, "I demand to free Roman Protasevich urgently." Ryanair said it had informed the national and European safety and security agencies and apologised to passengers for a delay it described as outside its control; critics noted that its first statement did not mention the arrest.
The international response and investigations
The reaction from Brussels was swift. On 26 May 2021 the European Union and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency told European airlines to avoid Belarusian airspace, and on 4 June the EU banned Belarusian carriers from its airspace and airports, alongside wider sanctions. Lithuania had already closed its routes through Belarus from 25 May.
ICAO's fact-finding report, published on 17 January 2022, concluded that the threat was fake, but it could not attribute the act to a specific person or state, partly because Belarus did not preserve records or allow access to the controller, phone logs and airport camera footage. In July 2022 the ICAO Council condemned the actions of the Government of Belarus as an act of unlawful interference with civil aviation.
Other countries opened their own cases. Four Americans were on board, so the FBI investigated, and on 20 January 2022 US federal prosecutors in New York charged four Belarusian officials with conspiracy to commit aircraft piracy. In December 2021 a Minsk air traffic controller, Oleg Galegov, defected to Poland and said KGB officers had been present in the control tower during the incident. In September 2024 Polish prosecutors charged three Belarusian officials over the false bomb alert.
What happened to Protasevich and Sapega
Within days, Belarusian state television broadcast videos in which Protasevich confessed to organising unrest. His family and supporters said the statements had been made under pressure. In June 2021 he was transferred to house arrest. His trial began in February 2023, and on 3 May 2023 he was sentenced to eight years in prison. Less than three weeks later, on 22 May 2023, Belarusian state media reported that Lukashenko had pardoned him, and he was released the next day. He was taken off the terrorist list in July 2023.
Since then, Protasevich has publicly aligned himself with the authorities and has worked for Belarusian state television, a turn that former colleagues see as a product of the pressure he endured. Sofia Sapega, a Russian citizen who had studied in Vilnius, was sentenced to six years in prison on charges including inciting social hatred.
Why the case still matters
The FR4978 diversion showed that commercial airspace, long treated as neutral ground, could be used as a trap for dissidents. It also showed the limits of international aviation law: ICAO could document that the threat was fabricated, but it had no power to compel evidence or punish a state. For travellers the practical result was lasting. European airlines still route around Belarus, and Belarusian airlines remain excluded from EU skies.
For journalists working in exile, the lesson was harsher. Leaving a country is not always enough to be out of reach, and the story of Protasevich's arrest, confession and pardon is now studied by press-freedom groups as an example of how authoritarian governments can break and then publicly reuse their critics.
Sources: Wikipedia: Ryanair Flight 4978; Wikipedia: Raman Pratasevich. Quotes from Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Gitanas Nausėda and the Ryanair statement as reported by Reuters on 23 May 2021.
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