Why sanctions against Putin and his allies don’t work

An ‘act of aviation piracy’ was how Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary described the forcible grounding of one of his planes in Minsk by Belarusian authorities in order to arrest a dissident who was on board. ‘A shocking assault on civil aviation and an assault on international law,’ said the UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab. The Taoiseach Micheál Martin, en route to Brussels for an emergency meeting, called for EU heads of state to deliver a ‘very firm and strong response’ to Belarus’s President Alexander Lukashenko. But what response can the West actually make that will put an end to lawless behaviour by Lukashenko — and, more importantly, by his on-and-off ally Vladimir Putin? Where to hit where it really hurts?

The EU’s initial reaction was to begin suspending the licence of Belarus’s national airline, Belavia, and to call for a ban on all flights from Europe to Minsk. As an opening shot, that seems at first glance to be reasonably proportional.