Putin shares impressions about his talks with Belarus president

Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke about the reaction that his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko showed in response to Ryanair flight crisis.

"As the President of Belarus explained to me, they did not plan any operations like that. They were informed that this person was on board (the founder and former editor-in-chief of NEXTA Telegram channel Roman Protasevich — ed.) after he was already on the territory of Belarus and his photos appeared on the Internet," said Putin, adding that he did not want to go into details about the landing of the Irish airplane.

Vladimir Putin also assured that Russian special services had nothing to do with the incident in Minsk.

In response to the request to comment on the version of the involvement of the Hamas movement in the aircraft, Putin said that he did not want to give any assessments. Russia takes a neutral position on internal political events in Belarus, he stressed.

Putin urged everyone not to interfere and give the Belarusians an opportunity to figure out the situation inside their country for themselves.

Roman Protasevich was detained on May 23 in Minsk. He flew from Athens to Vilnius on board the Ryanair plane, which made an emergency landing in the Belarusian capital after pilots received a report about a bomb on board. The Belarusian authorities accuse NEXTA founder Protasevich of organizing mass riots in Belarus.

On June 4, Belarusian state TV channels showed a video of Protasevich's confession of organizing riots in Belarus in 2020. The blogger also revealed the names of his supporters. A few days earlier, the journalist's mother stated that he had been tortured for that information.