Journalist Vitaly Portnikov said this on Espreso TV.“There is one story that the Russians keep talking about; it is part of their negotiations with the Americans: the restoration of direct flights between Russia and the United States. And it is clear that Trump cannot agree to restore direct flights until Russia takes at least some steps toward resolving the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, which they are not going to do,” he said.Portnikov added that flights from Belarus to the United States are not possible because European countries would not allow them.“But imagine a Belavia plane took off, say, from Domodedovo in Moscow and flew to America. It wouldn’t need to fly over Europe, right? It could go in another direction. There you have direct flights: Moscow–New York on the wings of Belarusian airlines. You could even paint a few Aeroflot planes in those red-and-green colors. And the company Belavia: ‘Fly Belavia planes to the United States.’ Perfect,” the journalist noted.According to the publicist, everything will be arranged so that Trump has nothing to do with it, because he did not lift sanctions on Russia or negotiate direct flights.“Well, the Belarusian airline reached agreements with Moscow airports. Listen, our airlines make deals with airports in Moldova and fly from there to various countries. Or take Ryanair, it flies from any airport to any airport. We don’t ask why an Irish airline flies from France to Poland. Well, it flies, that’s how the world works now. So why can’t a Belarusian airline fly from Moscow to New York? There you have it. Problem solved,” Portnikov said.He added that no aviation spare parts are needed for this.“Spare parts are needed for them to reach their destination, of course, I’m joking. But one way or another, this could simply be the result of certain agreements between Witkoff and Putin. And they are arranged so that no one even notices that they made a deal and carried it out. Next time, another issue will need to be resolved, which Witkoff and Putin will sort out. And again, Lukashenko will release some number of people — 50, 150, or 40, it doesn’t matter,” the journalist said.According to the expert, in such a case, sanctions could again be lifted from a company that falls within the interests of Putin, Abramovich, or someone else through whom Moscow plans to resolve its issue.“That is, one can imagine that Trump and Putin in Alaska could have agreed to turn Belarus into a window for their own cooperation. This, by the way, is what a true buffer state is. Just as Vladimir Lenin temporarily left the Far Eastern Republic as a buffer state with its capital in Vladivostok,” Portnikov concluded.On September 11, U.S. envoy John Coale arrived in Minsk with a delegation and met with Belarus’s self-declared president Alexander Lukashenko, announcing that Washington would lift sanctions on the airline Belavia.