Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko has admitted that a KGB operative was aboard the Ryanair flight forced to land in Minsk under the false pretext of a bomb threat. A Belarusian MiG-29 fighter jet intercepted the Boeing 737-800, carrying 132 passengers, compelling it to make an emergency landing in what international observers widely condemned as a "state-sponsored hijacking".
The incident in May 2021 resulted in the immediate arrest of two passengers: Roman Protasevich, then 26, a prominent opposition activist, and his girlfriend Sofia Sapega, a 23-year-old Russian law student. Lukashenko has now claimed that Protasevich was a Belarusian KGB agent operating undercover, posing as a dissident while running a widely followed anti-government Telegram channel. Sapega is believed to have been unaware of his alleged double role.