Restoration of Ukraine-Belarus air links depends “on the behavior of Belarus,
how they will behave with those political prisoners, of whom there are already thousands today,” Oleksiy Danilov, Secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said Friday. Air links were broken after Belarus forced down a Ryanair Athens-Vilnius flight and arrested a dissident journalist Roman Protasevich and his Russian girlfriend, Sofia Sapega. Western nations say that action on May 23 by Belarusian Air Force MiG-29 amounts to state piracy and must not be tolerated.