What is Putin up to in Belarus?

It is always hard trying to figure out what Vladimir Putin has in mind, but a good second-best is trying to understand what he is doing. If his real intent is to distance himself from Alexander Lukashenko, as some Russian commentators have been trying to tell us, why would he retaliate by banning European flights over Russian territory - or formally those flights that bypass Belarus? We cannot exclude that there is a motive behind this decision that we fail to understand. But the obvious conclusion we draw from this event is that Putin and Lukashenko are acting together.

We have been reporting about the possibility of a Russia-Belarus political union - not a power grab, but a gradual process. The hijacking of the Ryanair plane has the potential to accelerate this process.