They could have also been refused access to the airspace of other countries sorrounding Austria if they had not chosen to land there. We don't know how the situation would have evolved.

And at "best", Assange could be the source of the (mis)information that Snowden may have been on board - the stunt itself was entirely pulled by the governments of France, Spain, Italy.

> that they were refused entry into the airspaces of several countries

Countries that minutes earlier they were cleared to fly through, and had planned to fly through. Had they ignored the refusal and proceeded as planned? Same ending: fighter jets.

Let’s not pretend here that this is different.

Clearance to fly through and clearance to make an emergency landing due to doubts about the fuel gauge (we have the cockpit audio discussing the latter...) are not the same thing.

If there was really a dastardly plot to capture the guy that wasn't even on the aircraft, they'd have gone for fighter jets, not "don't land in our country, land in the country you're flying over where a diplomat will be mildly undiplomatic towards you [or fly back to Russia completely unmolested]"

One could argue that figher jets were not used at that time to keep the pretence of legitimacy of the entire episode. And that pretence is important, because when you publicly declare that the force is now the standard, the most unscrupulous bully wins over bullies with moral limits or political liabilities. Belarus, on the other hand, in its current political environment has no image to lose.

One could also argue fighter jets weren't used at the time because none of the states involved planned for Morales' pilot to identify an issue with his fuel gauge and request permission to land, which has the neat property of being consistent with the hard evidence as well as not involving the whole of Europe's ATC coming up with the clumsiest plot ever to detain someone who wasn't actually there, particularly significant to Europeans or any easier to arrest in Vienna than the originally scheduled stop in the Canary Islands

Someone should let the Bolivians know because they missed that bit from their accounts!

Very much NOT the same ending. Had this theoretical situation happened, and had fighter jets been scrambled, they would have escorted the plane out of their airspace. They would NOT have forced it to land and arrested any passengers.

That's just speculation. Chances are they would have actually grounded the plane instead, because nobody would want to risk the plane falling down because of lack of fuel while being escorted.

Let's be honest here: Putin and Lukashenko can get away with this sort of shit because "we" first showed that it's acceptable behaviour. This is the risk of breaking unwritten rules on the international stage: sooner or later a bad guy will do it too, and you won't have the moral high ground. This journalist, and all the others who will have to take airspace into consideration from now on, are paying for the sins of Obama.

You say "nobody would", but that is standard procedure when a plane enters an airspace it is not allowed into. I don't see why there would be an exception in this case, and you want to argue that, I think you will need to actually justify that.