The UEC European Track Championships scheduled for June 23-27 will not be held in Minsk, Belarus, the UEC Steering Committee announced today. [Widespread pressure to cancel the championships was created after an international incident last week when a Ryanair flight between Greece and Lithuania was forced to land in Minsk after receiving a fake bomb threat.

The ruse led to the arrest of opposition journalist Roman Protasevci and his girlfriend, Sofia Sapega, on the orders of the country's president, Alexander Lukashenko.

Several countries, including the United Kingdom, banned passage over the country, and Germany and the Netherlands withdrew from the European Track Championships.

"We have been closely following the situation of the Belarusian Cycling Federation, which has recently developed into an international debate, and today the Governing Board decided to cancel the event in Minsk," said UEC President Enrico Della Caza. [I would like to thank the Belarusian Cycling Federation and its President and member of the Steering Committee, Natalia Tsirinskaya, for their dedicated work in the preparation of the event and for planning important initiatives to develop Belarusian cycling with additional activity programs during the European Championships. I would like to thank him for his work."

"We are already working on finding alternatives to allow athletes from the 50 national federations to compete in continental events this season."

An investigation earlier this month by Cyclingtips (opens in new tab) and Emil Rottbøll (published before the plane landed and arrests were made) found that Apeldoorn in the Netherlands, Balerup in Denmark, and Lithuania were among the countries where various sports events and federations have been forced to break Belarus had offered to host events after the decision to sever ties with the country.

All requests were turned down in their entirety by the UEC. It is currently unknown where the event will be held.