Protasevich Street? Bucharest mulls changing address of Belarusian embassy
reuters.com
reuters.com
While this might not accomplish much in real terms, I do find it hilarious.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_street_names_changed_a...
I just heard an interview with a journalist, Jolyon Naegele, a Western correspondent in Czechoslovakia in the 80s (who worked for Radio Free Europe). He talked about how Czechoslovak secret services bothered him (often in a very crude, stupid ways) and also how they, in some sense, were afraid of him, since they assumed that he is a foreign agent. The assumption came from the fact that all the Czechoslovak foreign correspondents in the West actually _were_ agents of secret services.
My point is, you cannot generalize the systemic features of Western liberal democracies to authoritarian countries.
So I would be surprised if this is not true for diplomats as well. Most of them, if not all, are probably operatives of Belarusian secret services, and they probably have mostly conservative-authoritarian values.
At best, they are a distraction. At worst, they reinforce the more juvenile members of each nation's diplomatic core that encourage non-constructive tit-for-tat "optics" politics.
I do imagine that the USPS will deliver to the 1600 block of either Crittenden St. or Rev. Jerry Moore Plaza, or to 800 block of either 16th St. NW or Black Lives Matter Plaza.
> The street in the Romanian capital Bucharest where the Belarusian embassy is located could be renamed in honour of dissident journalist Roman Protasevich as a gesture of solidarity after his dramatic arrest, a district mayor has said.
HN is notorious for changing the title so many times and frequently that its hard to know whether the title changed since the post was made.
That's mostly because people regularly submit with misleading/false titles.
e.g. this topic they changed "Deno 1.10" to "Deno 1.1" in the title: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27127316
Which are not the same things.
Also I've seen attempts to clarify actors involved, but occasionally making it muddier. e.g. this one removes the fact that the response was from a Wireguard developer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25759477
Or once or twice, just wrong.
I'm not saying this is malicious, but the criteria for getting titles changed is definitely more loose than "title is false/misleading".
Western news media outlets, by contrast, seem to be lionizing the journalist's role in the Belarus protests, but at some point I imagine they will have address the above two points. Silence is too awkward.
It is interesting to diff the propaganda from both sides here, especially since domestic propaganda value appears to have been a key component of why Lukashenko chose to do this.
This is objectively false, since there are way more refugees chosing to go to Russia and its allies (Snowden and who else?) than the other way round (thousands every year).
Nitpick: Snowden chose to live in South America actually (Bolivia or Equador) he was just in transit in Moscow but he was just never given the right to onboard the plane again after the US canceled his passport.
But don't think for a second that the US won't force a diplomat's plane to land even outside their jurisdiction just because they believe an enemy of the state is on it. It's all about interests.
They already did that. It's funny that this is considered ok.
EU countries like Spain and Italy denied access to their airspace to a diplomatic flight in what was essentially equally immoral stunt as the one Belarus pulled. Only with the added "bonus" of showing that being a diplomat means nothing. Now the same countries have to walk the fine line of accusing the enemy while not incriminating the frenemy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident
[0] https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/europa/luftfahrtrecht-zwan... (in german)
I'm positive that the West will make use of that loophole at the first opportunity.
He seems to be arguing that this clause was broken in spirit or something. I can't quite make out the finer details though, but it's not exactly a slam dunk violation - the treaty does say they may require the aircraft to make a landing and they did.
If this were an American plane, I would fully consider it an act of war and make a lot of noise to that extent. If it were an American citizen, it would be worth—even if solely to draw a line—a tactical incursion to attempt exfiltration. But it’s not. We don’t have Nordstream or Orban or all the other capitulations Brussels (and Berlin) have made that create a geopolitical vulnerability with an actor willing to exploit them. The situation is thus properly complicated.
The only mitigating factor to Minks’s credit is Protasevich having never secured EU citizenship.
I think people who are fully one one side of this are fully convinced by one of those. I don't think it's swaying people on the fence, however.
The individual does matter. It doesn't look great to start naming streets after arrested neo-nazis. If that story has legs (unclear if it does) this will really not endear Belarussians to the West and will play directly into Putin's narrative, which is that we enthusiastically support neonazis who fight Russia.
They're deflecting because Lukashenko's official narrative (the bomb story) is too absurd even for them to peddle. They can't really say that the plane wasn't hijacked so instead they're falling back to "well he had it coming". This is definitely a new low for the Russia-Western relations, they normally bother with at least some plausible deniability.
FYI Belarus is a country rather than a region in Russia.
I don't think that part will change any minds.
"The Ryanair flight from Greece to Lithuania was compelled to land in Minsk on Sunday while traveling through Belarusian airspace, on the basis of what appears to be a fraudulent claim that a bomb might be on board."
Is what they wrote this morning.
Are you surprised? This is the usual behavior of the Western "free" and "independent" media. Double standards in action.
I did not analyze everything but they mentioned the reactions of western countries, the fact that Protasevich was arrested etc.
When extensively travelling in the ME 12 years ago, I often watched Al-Jazeera (in English) and I di not find anything outrageous either.
So either I did not read closely, or there is some subliminal text that I did not notice, or I was not interested enough to be the right target (just for the record, I think that the Belorussian govt is completely fucked up and we (France) should do whatever we can to kick them in the ass, more than just closing the airspace (and yes, I do not know what)).
I'm probably negativly biased by not having seen many dictators fall in the recent years, and a bunch of autocratic government flourish, while the US and EU are enacting sanctions all the time.
That being said, maybe the effect can't be spectacular, and it's one of those "sit by the river..." things where you have to surrender to time and biology.
I've found sanctions to have only reinforced the us-vs-the-world mentality in Serbia in the early 90s, and I don't think they achieved the goal of the Western countries at the time (which I have no idea what it was, but if it was to get people to dissent enough to overthrow the government, they didn't succeed). It was similar in the NATO bombing of Serbia and Montenegro in 1999, whereas NATO resorted to bombing civilian targets (like TV station, power plants and bridges in cities) to increase discontent, which did get the government to agree to some sort of surrender (which was only partial compared to the original demands), but this was basically sanctions++ (you not only stop external trade, but destroy things country has already built). Even then, government was overthrown a full year later mostly in parliamentary elections with some election-fraud drama sprinkled in. And people were already much better off than in the low times of early 90s (even outstanding foreign currency debts by banks to people from before the 90s financial collapse were being paid off at the time), so economic downturn was not the driver for the change.
I think the core missing part in these "developing democracies" is the skill to compromise (as hundreds of registered political parties in Serbia would attest).
As such, I would posit quite the contrary, that helping the population increase wealth would drive them to want to protect that wealth more through democratic and civil means, thus eventually overthrowing the government (I am sure we'll see that in China soon enough, even if it gets masqueraded as not switching away from "communism", though it's so huge that it is a special case). It's not as dramatic as war or sanctions, and might take a decade or two, but I am not sure sanctions have done a better job anywhere either.
Of course not. My point was that the elite will continue to enjoy most of their privileges while common people will struggle to buy a loaf of bread, which is more or less what happens with sanctions. International laws prohibit any other type of intervention, so the change has to come from the inside, and in my opinion the only way to facilitate it is to use sanctions to push the difference between ruling and poor class to the extreme so that it could ignite public revolt. It stinks, badly, but that's how politics works. I don't think the Serbia example applies here, back then there was a war, and I recall one of my school teachers, who was from Friuli (north east Italy) just meters from the then Yugoslavia, telling the then 10 years old me in the mid 70s about the mutual hatred between various ethnic groups in the area, like they were just waiting for a chance to go at war against each other. In Belarus, unless I missed something (corrections welcome) there is "just" people against their corrupt decades old oppressive government.
As for any other interventions, why not just give each person a donation of 100k euros to see if that works? Otherwise, people under sanctions would rather you not help them.
As has been indicated previously, what are the examples of where sanctions have worked?
They are actually counter-productive, in my opinion by distracting attention away from meaningful action.
We don't live in a turn based strategy and the mayor did not spend her action. She doesn't have to wait for the next turn to do something else.
So unless there are indications that other decisions were delayed or scrapped because they want to change the street name, this is irrelevant.
Real world doesn't work like that. If you are familiar with Bucharest municipal politics, by all means criticise that they are not doing a good enough job, or that they handled some things wrong.
But without context it's nonsensical to attack someone the way you do.
Perhaps the mayor is doing 10x better job than her predecessor and she proposed this name change in addition to that.
Technically, the argument is that they are doing less work than their hypothetical counterpart who is identical in all respects, but did not spend time on making the name change proposal.
Clearly this is almost nonfalsifiable, so a difficult argument to take seriously.
The grandparent comment didn't challenge it, but asked rhetorically what [else] a mayor could do.
This response implies that something had to be done (by the mayor) by definition, whether useful or not. And that's what's fallacious to me.
Municipal entities aren't really actors in international politics, and when they try playing such a role, the results tend to be dubious. That's my opinion at least.
As for your comment - that "people can make more than one decision in a year" - it, in turn, feels like a strawman argument to me, because noone said that they can't. There is still some limit, though (obviously larger than 1, but nevertheless finite), and renaming a street always comes at a substantial cost - both for the city and private entities. Cost associated with the need for changing street name signs, changing documents etc. Maybe that cost is worth paying, but an ad absurdum line of argument isn't something that could convince me of it.
This is demonstrably false. The change sends a message, which is certain to be heard. It also signals a position to the local population. You can argue it is not much, but it is not nothing. I would say the effect seems proportional to the amount of time needed to take such a decision.
The actual context was that the mayor should do something useful instead of doing this, which is fallacious as she can do both.
> This response implies that something had to be done (by the mayor) by definition, whether useful or not. And that's what's fallacious to me.
Well yes, it would be fallacious. That's why I did not make that point, and instead referred only to this specific decision. Note that I did not even say that it was a good decision, just that the premise that doing it somehow prevented them from doing something else was flawed.
> Municipal entities aren't really actors in international politics, and when they try playing such a role, the results tend to be dubious. That's my opinion at least.
Municipal entities do not exist in a vacuum. They are shaped by and react to national and international politics. Particularly capitals with embassies and stuff. In a context of increased nationalism and cultural tensions, these things are bound to happen, even though as you say it's not necessarily effective or useful. Changing street names for some political reason really isn't new or remarkable.
> As for your comment - that "people can make more than one decision in a year" - it, in turn, feels like a strawman argument to me, because noone said that they can't.
You should read the thread. Plenty of people are saying just that, and your comment implied it heavily in the context of the discussion.
You seem to want to minimise the consequences and emphasise the costs of the decision. In reality, it does not do much, and does not cost much either.
It's pointless when it is not backed by real sanctions. It does nothing to punish brazen actions of autocrats while giving them fuel for propaganda.
> Punishing autocrats on their ego instead of their people sounds like a much better approach.
How about real sanctions on autocrats, their cronies, families and businesses? Sanction oligarchs, sanction businesses that are main source of income for autocrats etc. If you want to help ordinary people - simplify immigration.
> Given that economic sanctions usually fail to overthrow the regimes they are intended to punish
Maybe not, but they cripple country development and leave autocrats with less resources for a future actions.
Sure, but these have a limited reach and they are usually being done very early in the sanction process. But once the targets have no more estate in the Western world, there is not much you can do.
> Maybe not, but they cripple country development and leave autocrats with less resources for a future actions.
But that's a really limited success at the cost of hundreds of lives, which makes it morally very difficult to justify.
By the way there is at least one statue of Lithuanian liberty fighting "terrorist" in Chicago.
As if Bucharest has no other problems to solve. I mean, I’ve been there, the place is literally falling apart.
Do you have another source?
[0] https://mobile.twitter.com/Volod_Ishchenko/status/1397273535...
http://euromaidanpress.com/2021/05/26/protasevich-is-a-dissi...
Where truth dies so easily, make your own judgement.
> Conspiracy theorist Ivan Katchanovski, known in Ukraine for online ballistic “expertise” of trees on Instytutska square to “prove” Maidan protesters shot each other
Which invalidates it right away. I’m yet to hear a convincing story from the Ukrainian government about who shot people on Maidan.
[0] https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/colonelcassad/19281164/28822...
I'm not saying "he was in a white supremacist militia" but if that's him in [0] (cf. [1] — claimed to be a picture of his phone) then maybe he was at some time a part of Azov batallion. It's still unclear in what function he was there though.
[0] https://www.svaboda.org/a/27255566.html
[1] https://telegra.ph/Voeval-li-Protasevich-v-Ukraine-05-27
https://twitter.com/Volod_Ishchenko/status/13975130316183715...
Since I never heard of "SvaStone" before, a quick search confirms that the brand sold other tshirts with the least subtle slogans possible, like:
"White baby — the future of our race."
https://huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/facebook-nazi-clothing-ex...
1- Communists aren't in power in Belarus (nor Russia)
2- Protasevich is not a communist
3- None of the discussion that's happening is about seizing the means of production
4- Being a neo-nazi is not bad because the word starts with a "N", it's bad because the ideology behind it advocates for racial conflict and ethnic cleansing.
If he actually joined them, he's certainly not boasting about it.
Moldova, who was part of the Eastern bloc, has strong tendencies towards EU and RO, Romania is even offering them citizenship, to literally everyone that applies for one. Moldova has a region called Transnistria which is the equivalent of Ukrainian Donbass. It's a ticking bomb.
Ukraine, is literally divided, in the sense that their politicians don't have a clear direction. Romania and the EU still do not know if they are on the course to join the EU. Last time, Ukraine took the Russian and Romanian curriculum out of the schools. Let's not forget that Ukraine has pretty significant Romanian and Russian minorities. What kind of signal does this send? You don't even know what they are on about. Is that the start of a fierce nationalism promoting isolationism?
Serbia, another Romanian neighbor, they have affinities with Russia due to their shared Slavic heritage, which is perfectly fine. But they also don't give any indication of anything. What are your plans? Do you see yourself as an EU member? Is there any anti-corruption fight going on?
The only close neighbor to Romania is Hungary because of their shared European values. But even Hungary has problems with JOBBIK and Fidesz. Bulgaria comes second.
I can say that Romania is already living the new Cold War, it's right at the core. Without EU and NATO, today Transylvania, Moldavia and Wallachia wouldn't have been a unitary body of democractic values called Romania.
You can't sanction Belarus through brute force. You can't take on Russia without repercussions. Looks at this game between the embassies:
Romania kicks out 1 Russian embassy official: https://www.dw.com/en/romania-kicks-out-russian-embassy-offi...
Russia kicks out 1 Romanian embassy official: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/05/11/russia-expels-roma...
In a country where prospect of joining never had strong support in general population (except in a sense that we would join only for money) even euro-enthusiasts figured out that joining isn't going to happen in short/mid term.
On the other side, our links to Russia in west media are pictured as much stronger than they really are. Culturally we are more western oriented and Russia is able do capitalize mostly on resentment regarding wars in '90. That won't disappear anytime soon but that's something where Russia plays only secondary role.
In the end Romania has no reasons to be on alert regarding Serbia (there was never a war between two countries, quite rare here), and minority issues aren't significant.
> Moldova, who was part of the Eastern bloc, has strong tendencies towards EU and RO, Romania is even offering them citizenship, to literally everyone that applies for one. Moldova has a region called Transnistria which is the equivalent of Ukrainian Donbass. It's a ticking bomb.
Transnistria is not an issue really. With modern Western weapons, both Moldova, and Romania can contain it with a single division.
> I can say that Romania is already living the new Cold War, it's right at the core. Without EU and NATO, today Transylvania, Moldavia and Wallachia wouldn't have been a unitary body of democractic values called Romania.
Romania, with all its flaws, still has a functioning military, ministry of interior, mostly stuffed with pro-nationalist cadres. The chance of Russia pulling Crimea on it is low. They will not have the same ease to bribe half of the general staff as they did in Ukraine.
This would be an issue as big as Putin would want to make it. He would not have any qualm sending some troops there if it could further destabilise Europe.
> Romania, with all its flaws, still has a functioning military, ministry of interior, mostly stuffed with pro-nationalist cadres. The chance of Russia pulling Crimea on it is low. They will not have the same ease to bribe half of the general staff as they did in Ukraine.
Thankfully.
And... bad for him! He should be let doing his destabilising as much as he wants, as long as he is wasting his armies, and it is 2:1 for NATO.
The current Western discourse about possible confrontation with Russia is too sentimental, and not guided by ground truths. Few things what pundits say make sense military wise about the current situation in Europe.
As I said before, the truth of few centuries of military history is unequivocal: it is a very good thing to trip your opponent into a big war for a small gain, while your main force can stay back, and preserve its power.
You say that. A couple of years ago I would have agreed. Now I see several major NATO partners unwilling to intervene in such a situation. I am sorry for my Moldovan friends, but in most likelihood nobody will budge for Moldova. Particularly as we've seen how American support can be fickle these days, and such an operation would last longer than a term of an US president. So yeah, not much confidence here.
> As I said before, the truth of few centuries of military history is unequivocal: it is a very good thing to trip your opponent into a big war for a small gain, while your main force can stay back, and preserve its power.
That's fine and dandy when you have a convenient 2000 km-wide moat and all this is quite abstract. If there is a thing we really don't want in Europe it's a war, regardless of the size and who ends up winning it. Also, another truth you can learn from History is that there is no easy war.
Right. Because if an autocratic bully is offended by a name change, it clearly is the fault of the people changing the name. Appeasement is totally the solution. Let's just do whatever they want us to do, I'm sure it's going to be great.
In the real world though, naming streets is the prerogative of the city councils or mayors, not the dictator next door.
> As if Bucharest has no other problems to solve.
Sorry, this is just stupid. I am sure you realise that people can do more than one thing at one given moment, right? Reality is not turn based.
I don't understand the need to insult the city, regardless of your opinion of one politician's gestures or proposals.
How is that a fact? Perhaps you meant 'figuratively falling apart'. How much of the city have you visited? How much do you know about the place and what's going on there?
I think the idea that any (inhabited) city in the world is 'literally' falling apart is a stretch, but if it were to be applicable somewhere, it would have to be a place that was recently ravaged by wars or earthquakes or tsunamis or something like that.
I suspect what you meant was along the lines of 'I was there once and I didn't like it and I don't like that the mayor wants to rename the street, so fuck all the people who live there and their shitty city'. This is why I found it offensive.
> It seems quite relevant in the light of officials trying to ride the hype train.
It is precisely and completely irrelevant. If anything it's an example of whataboutism [1].
While azov is definitely is not a great bunch, in 2014 it was one of the only groups, alongside with donbas battalion that was accepting volunteers and this was the main attraction. A lot of belarusians and ukranians got there, fought and left and they realized what azov is really about.
Tut.by's article: https://telegra.ph/Voeval-li-Protasevich-v-Ukraine-05-27
Most of my family got affected by the regime at some point before leaving the country, witnessed massacre in 2011, gov-t staged terrorist acts. And knowing how Belarus needs people like Protasevich, Putilo, Zavadski, Byabenin, Cherkasova i am willfully dismissing his misdoings in favour of his later achievements.
I know that people love to let their entire opinion be based on a single article, but let the bigger picture in.
Would be nice to read his articles if there are any. He's a journalist after all. Right?
Worked for euroradio
https://euroradio.fm/en/anarchists-describe-their-arrests-i-...
https://euroradio.fm/en/young-man-imprisoned-drug-related-cr...
https://euroradio.fm/en/girl-you-better-go-do-some-work-and-...
https://euroradio.fm/en/lithuania-prepares-potential-belnpp-...
Moved to poland fearing arrest. Joined Nexta. Biggest belarusian tg channel.
Enjoy, most of the stuff before september 28th.
edit: Anarchists in Belarus are actively persecuted by kgb over the last 20 years. They are seen as enemies of the state and are constantly watched. Police brutality, election fraud, are themes that are very taboo in state media, and journalists that write about these things are often arrested because of treir work.
Combat medics, for example, that are by Geneva convention are non-combatants are still trained to use rifles and carry at least a pistol, in most militaries, for personal protection during active service.
The issue with this is, in the court of public opinion, once it's proven that your "alibi" doesn't hold water, you aren't allowed to come with an alternative "alibi", but rather perceived as a liar; otherwise you would tell the truth from the beginning.
West. Basic training. https://www.todaysmilitary.com/careers-benefits/careers/publ...
East. The "Тактика" и "Военная подготовка" part. This is an example of russian uni that trains military journalists specifically, still during my time in my military dept (not military uni, just a dept) in uni "Военная подготовка" went above and beyond shooting on a range and ruck marches. https://voronezh.postupi.online/vuz/vgu/programma/10008/
European countries mostly pick fresh recruits after basic, and do additional training, then they assigned a role.
It is idiotic because local politicians should not do foreign policy, and if they try they likely will show themselves as incompetent fools.
1. involved in proposing changing a street name
2. spent by the mayor directly on the activities you mention
I have absolutely no love for Lukashenko (or for his master Putin for that matter) and I fully agree that what was done is outrageous and should be condemned and sanctioned (as long as the EU finds a way to sanction the elite without harming the Belarusian people themselves).
However, I think this kind of gestures are hasty, puerile and unnecessarily provocative. Naming a street just to spite another country's leader is on par with the kind of idiotic gestures somebody like Rogozin is famous for [1]. What's next, naming a street after Navalny to spite Putin? And after that? Khashoggi boulevard to piss off MBS? This would never end. By this measure the entire city should be renamed to spite all the despots of the world.
The idea of a negative reason to name a street is also extremely dubious. Normally streets, squares, parks etc. are named after people or events we want to praise or commemorate. I understand that Protasevich is a dissident and people like him should be protected and encouraged, but why name a street after him? And in Bucharest of all places? Does he have any connection to the city or the country? Is he a hero of the Romanian people? Does Romania, Bucharest or the 1st district have anything to do with the fight for democracy in Belarus?
The whole thing is ill conceived.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Rogozin#Controversy
Doubt it. I have to imagine "Ambasada Belarusului, București 011411" is going to be pretty deliverable.
As someone living in a country on it's way of total authoritarianism, I hate it when the West do almost nothing [1] for the sake of economic relations with the aggressor or with it's bigger brother.
This is not just another case of an editorialized title on HN.
It‘s much worse.
The EU has been accused precisely that it won't actually do anything against the arrest of Protasevich, besides posting angry tweets for a few days.
The title of the article suggest it has actually done „something“.
But in reality it‘s exactly what we all fear, just „some guy“ trolling around on Facebook, giving the impression that something was done!
Well that "guy" is the mayor of one of the capital's districts, and she used to be a member of the european parliament.
No idea if anything will come from this proposal, but it's not some guy trolling on Facebook.
There are already _a lot_ of economic sanctions aimed at Belarus and each time new ones are imposed, it'll be successively harder to do more the next time. There's only so much that can be done -- The EU has already pretty much delivered Belarus into the hands of Russia and the EU isn't going to try direct intervention. Nobody wants a confrontation with Russia or a repeat of the Ukraine situation.
This is in direct opposition to the EU's strategic goals - it wants Belarussians have a favorable view of the EU and an unfavorable view of Russia. They've actually been doing fairly well at that so far.
On the other hand, if they do nothing they look weak.
RT and domestic Belarussian propaganda outlets are all geared up to tell Belarussians that they won't be able to get their medicine because the EU doesn't like that we used the same unconventional methods they used to get Snowden to arrest a domestic neo nazi insurgent (that being the line they're going with now) oh and by the way "they named a street after their hero".
I don't think there are many good options here. Indeed, doing nothing, galling as it might be, might be the lesser evil.
Protasevich Street? Bucharest mulls changing address of Belarusian embassy
This was a Polish plane flying from one EU country to another EU country with EU citizens on-board that was clearly hijacked. Mig-29 was sent to make sure this will happen.
What EU did? Blocked Belorussian planes for one day (looking on Flight Radar, blockade is gone now)? Changing street name? What else, twits, likes and crayons?
This is exactly what Putin wants - he wants to show that EU, NATO are not able to protect their interest in Central Europe, more, that they don't even care about this. Russia do this using force - Crimea invasion and catching Protasevich or using economy and influence - German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder was bribed by Russians to start building Nord Stream, then Nord Stream 2 followed.
Just out of curiosity, I checked now (2021-05-27 10:38 UTC) and not one flight over Belarus is an EU airline:
* Aeroflot, MOSCOW to BELGRADE
* Unmarked plane T7-HHH under San Marino registration
* Belavia, Minsk to Belgrade
* Fedex, Hongkong to Liege
* Belavia, Istanbul to Minsk
* Adzerbaijan Airlines, Baku to Moscow (what is this doing over Belarus, the flight path seems very strange - AHY6735)
* Air China, Frankfurt to Beijing
What do you expect EU to do about airlines it doesn't control ?
That leaves Hungary, Cyprus and Estonia. There are news articles for all three saying bans are supported or in progress — different countries have different legal processes for doing this, and it can take a few more days.
[1] https://en.belavia.by/news/ or https://en.belavia.by/table/
https://uk.flightaware.com/live/flight/AHY6735 Looks like this one was just Baku to Minsk though, no controversy. Their Baku-Moscow route is AHY181
Some of it is just straight up bribery. Selfishness is taking over basic patriotism. Not the toxic kind, I mean, basic, like knowing which team you are on, at least.
And the more minor part of it is, of course, the terminal condition of not wanting to "disturb the peace". Fine, then, they will do it FOR you, and they will control the situation.
As for Evo Moralez incident, the head of the State and its stuff has diplomatic immunity. Even if the plane is packed with snowdens and assanges you can NOT touch it.
I find it contunously hilarious. Always gives me a chuckle.
At the very beginning of HN guidelines we read:
"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. [...] If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
It sounds pretty much like a story that could make it to TV news, and the phenomenon itself is hardly new (a number of precedents has already been pointed out in other comments).
Because people complaining about this is tedious and a regular feature, and it only causes noise. If you don't like an article, move on. If you think it's off topic and shouldn't be there at all, flag.
For my part, I find it interesting not because of this specific incident, but because of the comments it has sparked showing how naming places is regularly being used as a low-key passive-aggressive protest by local governments.
To me that's an interesting hack around the otherwise limited powers of local government.
You just explained why you think this should be on HN, something that wouldn't have happened without the question.
Make no mistake - I do hope that Protasevich gets released, and I have no sympathy for the regime whatsoever... but there's absolutely no telling what his further life trajectory would be like, and the street name would be there to stay. (It's obviously not guaranteed "forever"; but that's usually the intention, the principle. Street names are not meant for temporary tributes or announcements)