What precipitated this situation was this incident:
Ryanair Flight 4978 - Wikipedia
Ryanair Flight 4978 (an Irish airliner, being operated by Ryanair's Polish subsidiary Buzz) was travelling between Athens, Greece, and Vilnius, Lithuania on the 23rd of May of this year. While over-flying Belarus, Europe's last dictatorship, it was ordered to land under the fabricated pretext of a terrorist bomb threat to the aircraft, in contravention of international law.
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Aboard the plane were the Belarusian dissident journalist Roman Petrosavich and his Russian girlfriend. They were both taken into custody.
In retaliation for this act, the EU imposed economic sanctions on Belarus. Belarus is an ally of Russia.
This crisis a stratagem by Lukashenko, the Belarusian president, to exert pressure on the EU to lift sanctions. Seemingly a very shrewd one, as it gives them a lot of leverage.