There’s a world of difference between what just happened to the Ryanair flight carrying a Belarusian journalist and to Bolivian president Evo Morales’s jet in 2013.
The double standards defence is the Kremlin’s go-to device whenever it’s accused of wrongdoing: “You Westerners have no moral right to point fingers because you do it too”.
It’s telling that Russia has unfolded the double standards umbrella over Belarussian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, who on May 23 scrambled a fighter jet to land a Ryanair plane in Minsk so he could get his hands on one of the passengers, opposition activist Raman Protasevich. The list of “precedents” Russia is helpfully citing is an indication that flying over Russian airspace, too, can be extremely risky for opponents of President Vladimir Putin, even if the “precedents” themselves don’t hold water.
