The European Track Championships will not take place in Minsk, Belarus, as had been planned next month as the fall-out from last week’s grounding of a Ryanair flight continues.
Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko has been widely condemned by the international community after a Ryanair plane flying in Belarusian air space was told to land in Minsk last weekend.
A prominent journalist and critic of Lukashenko, Roman Protasevich, was taken off the flight once it landed in the Belarusian city.
Mr Protasevich is being held in custody in Minsk after the incident on Sunday. His girlfriend, Sofia Sapega, was on the flight with him and was also taken away and is being held.
The Ryanair flight was traveling between two EU member states, Greece and Lithuania, at the time. The crew were told by the Belarusian authorities there was a suspected bomb on board and were instructed to land in Minsk.
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However, there was no bomb or any form of security issue and the grounding of the plane was designed so Mr Protasevich could be captured because he had helped organise mass demonstrations against president Lukashenko.
The forced grounding of an EU-registered plane flying between two EU countries by a regime outside the EU has been greeted with shock. In response, the EU is preparing to impose sanctions on Belarus.
In that context, it was widely expected the European Track Championships could not take place in Minsk.
The European cycling union is currently working on an alternative venue for the championships, at which an Irish team will be taking part. Some countries had already said they were pulling out of going to Minsk and other nations have banned flights going to Belarus.
UEC president Enrico Della Casa confirmed a decision had
been taken to cancel the Minsk championship meeting.
"We are already working on finding an alternative
solution to enable the riders from our 50 National Federations to compete in this
season’s continental event,” he said.
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