The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) is rapidly losing its ability to promote safe development of the civil aviation industry, Russia’s First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, told the UN Security Council on Monday.

"The recent developments in ICAO have demonstrated that the organization is rapidly losing its ability to deliver on its mandated issues in an impartial and professional way, namely - to contribute to a safe and progressive development of international civil aviation," he told a UN Security Council session developed to the Ryanair incident in May 2021.

"We see more and more situations when the ICAO acts in the interests of a small group of states," the Russian diplomat continued. "As we see, this sort of inability to properly respond to the problems of civil aviation, leads to a situation when these topics are taken to a non-specialized platform - the Security Council of the United Nations."

A Ryanair airliner, en route from Athens to Vilnius, landed at Minsk Airport on May 23, 2021 after a warning there was an explosive device on board. When the plane landed, it became known that among the passengers on board there was one Roman Protasevich, one of the founders of the Nexta telegram channel, recognized as extremist in Belarus. Protasevich was on the Belarusian authorities’ wanted list. He was detained along with Russian citizen Sofia Sapega.

After that incident, the European Union banned Belarusian airlines from operating flights to its airports and over its territory, and also recommended European carriers to avoid flying through Belarusian airspace. ICAO in its report concluded that the warnings of a bomb on board were deliberately false. Minsk said the report was categorically unacceptable and discrediting ICAO.