Fury over Belarus airliner action set to dominate EU summit

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BRUSSELS — Fury over the forced landing of a Ryanair plane in Belarus has upended the agenda of a European Union summit dinner on Monday, where leaders were due to discuss relations with Russia and Britain but will now also consider punitive steps against Minsk.

Belarusian authorities scrambled a fighter jet and flagged what turned out to be a false bomb alert to force the civilian aircraft to land on Sunday and then detained an opposition-minded journalist who was among the passengers on board.

The diversion of a plane owned by an EU company that was flying between two EU capitals was “an inadmissible step”, the bloc’s foreign policy chief said, and it would be raised at the…

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