Your trusted source

The EU on Monday agreed to slap new sanctions on Belarus, after Minsk forced a plane flying over its airspace to land in order to arrest a Belarusian dissident onboard, Deutsche Well reported. 

In response, the EU leaders decided to ban Belarusian carriers from flying over the bloc's airspace. The sanctions were approved during a summit in Brussels.

The EU called on European authorities "to adopt necessary measures to ban overflight of EU airspace by Belarusian airlines and prevent access to EU airports." They also requested EU carriers to refrain from flying over Belarusian airspace. Following the EU statement, Dutch airline KLM announced it would halt flights over Belarus.

German airline Lufthansa said Monday it would temporarily suspend its flights over Belarus until further notice, along with Latvian airline Air Baltic and Scandinavian airline SAS. 

In addition, the Ukrainian government stopped flights between Ukraine and Belarus and instructed Ukrainian aircraft not to fly over Belarusian airspace.The UK has also ordered British planes to avoid flying over Belarus.