Student Travelling With Critic Also Detained, Says Lithuania's Vilnius University

The student who is a Russian citizen, was flying to Vilnius to defend her Master's thesis at the university to graduate from her five-year course, the university said in a statement.

A Belarusian university in Vilnius on Monday said its student Sofia Sapega, 23, who was travelling with journalist Roman Protasevich, had also been detained when their flight was diverted there from Vilnius and demanded her release. The detention of Sapega was confirmed by her family, the European Humanities University (EHU) spokesman told Reuters. The university spokesman said Sapega and Protasevich had been on vacation in Greece together. In what was described by some EU leaders as a hijacking, the passenger plane flying from Athens to Lithuania was suddenly diverted to Minsk, the capital of Belarus, escorted there by a Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jet. On its landing, authorities took opposition-minded journalist Protasevich into custody.