Russia is not among the countries the European Union is considering sanctioning over the migrant crisis on the Poland-Belarus border, a senior EU official said Thursday after reports suggested Brussels could punish Russia’s flagship carrier Aeroflot for what it called “human trafficking.”
Bloomberg previously reported that the European Commission was considering sanctioning Aeroflot alongside Belarus’ Belavia, Turkish Airlines, FlyDubai and other officials for allegedly helping move people mainly from the Middle East to the EU borders.
Peter Stano, the EU’s lead spokesman for external affairs, told Russian media that the bloc is in talks with 10 countries that conduct and advertise direct flights to Minsk for them to use their “influence” and stop the migrant surge.
“Russia is not on this list,” Stano told the Ekho Moskvy radio station.
Stano added that the EU is monitoring a total of 30 countries “suspected of possible involvement in this illegal scheme of luring and transporting people” led by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
The West accuses Lukashenko of encouraging the migrants to travel Belarus to send them across the border in revenge for last year’s EU sanctions that punished Minsk for its harsh post-election crackdown on the opposition.
Aeroflot issued a firm denial of helping migrants and refugees travel to Belarus, threatening to go to court after the Bloomberg report saw its shares fall during trading.
Lukashenko also threatened to cut off gas supplies to Europe if it imposes sanctions for the migrant standoff, while Russian officials threatened to cut off key air routes for Western airlines if Brussels followed through with its reported plan to sanction Aeroflot.
Iraq and Kurdish representatives have meanwhile announced plans to send evacuation flights to return their stranded citizens from Belarus, though the migrants themselves have told international and Russian news organizations that they seek to gain access to the EU at all costs.
(c) The Moscow Times
“Russia is not on this list,” Stano told the Ekho Moskvy radio station.
Stano added that the EU is monitoring a total of 30 countries “suspected of possible involvement in this illegal scheme of luring and transporting people” led by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
Once again the EU show as much fight as a wet paper bag. Russia are up to it’s neck in this terrorism and to hell with Russian threats to block air routes for EU countries. Block Aeroflot from landing in any Western country, that will wake the dwarf terrorist up.
Unbelievable! They found 30 countries involved in the scam to move Muslims into the EU through Belarus but nobody in the EU knows Putin is running Belarus? That doesn’t even pass the smell test.
“the migrants themselves have told international and Russian news organizations that they seek to gain access to the EU at all costs.”
That is precisely the attitude of the illegal immigrants from primitive cultures. That is why they have to be ejected by force.
“Russia is not on this list,”
Why is the main culprit once again getting off scot-free? Because it is not possible to find even a single backbone in any Eurocrats’ spine. There is no gang of politicians worldwide so infested with idiocy and cowardice as the one in the EU.
To think, the West sacrificed millions of lives to free these bastards from evil, and they repay us by turning back to evil.
You cannot convert muslims into civilized christian-style people. They will never change, no bombs, no education, no money will change this fact. If our leaders had a spine, they would reject them to protect our society. But they are weaklings, fully ignoring the catastrophe they will cause.
The EU, even without US help, could have stopped putler dead in his tracks in 2014, if they had wanted. They held all the cards. They could have said :
All commercial fights suspended between Rus and the EU indefinitely.
All trade links to be suspended indefinitely.
All diplomatic channels closed.
They did none of these things. What I did not realise at the time was that France and Germany were and are Russia lackeys.
Unfortunately Ukraine fell into a trap with Minsk 1&2 and Normandy.
We now know that nothing would ever have come from them as France and Germany were working for their and Russia’s interests; which coincide.
Putler asset Berlusconi had been working on the EU’s behalf to get Russia to join the EU. Sarkozy also was a full putler asset.
I am convinced that Ukraine will never join the EU or Nato.
But I’m afraid the biggest villains, apart from the nazi rat, are the Budapest signatories. We simply reneged; as if it never existed.
We know from past history that Europe is full of communist and fascist sympathizers. Situation is the same now as in 1939. For Austria read Belarus. For Sudetenland read Crimea/Donbas.
Ukraine has been betrayed. Public opinion in the west has been poisoned by putler shills in the media and politics.
Every article about the US’s warning today is infested with putinoid scum trolls.
Some are professional kremkrappers; most are alt-right/right populists, with a smaller but significant number of communists who still support Russia regardless of who’s in power.
Indeed, Scradge, we live in bad times and most people don’t even know it, or rather think that inflation and high gas prices are their worse worries. What we have as leaders is so horrid, you couldn’t make this up. I can’t remember in all my life having such gross incompetence, cowardice, self-serving, narow-minded morons in high places. If their biggest worries are covid, toilets of every of the dozens of genders and critical race theories in schools, it’s no wonder that the likes of Putin and Xi feel free to increase their aggressive behavior: There are no serious consequences! Period!
Kids in schools, colleges and universities in Britain and America are being taught by fools whose ideology comes from a sinister book by Karl Marx. And we have let these bastards do it since the 1950’s!
Kids in Britain love the Swedish troll schoolgirl Marxist puppet. They will cry with her for the imagined terrible fate of polar bears, but have no tears for Ukraine’s kids, whose parents are dying for their country and once again being threatened by an evil fascist power.