The European Union is considering shunning Belarus's airspace and banning national carrier Belavia from its airports after Belarusian authorities scrambled a warplane and forced a Ryanair jetliner to land in Minsk to arrest a dissident.
EU leaders strongly condemned Belarus over Sunday's incident, in which a flight from Greece to Lithuania was diverted and Roman Protasevich, an opposition-minded journalist who was on board the plane, was detained.
Three Baltic states - Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia - said Belarusian airspace should be declared "unsafe" and that the 27-nation EU should close its airspace to Belarusian flights. Poland wants to suspend all flights between EU and Belarus until Protasevich walks free.
"I will propose that all flights from Belarus to the European Union and back be stopped until this young man is released," Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said, during a news conference about 26-year-old Protasevich.
A Latvian airline, airBaltic, became the first to announce it would no longer use Belarusian air space, while France and Ireland said air traffic restrictions could be part of the EU's response.
"Together with international partners, we will work to close the airspace of Belarus to international flights," said Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte.