Teddybear Airdrop Minsk 2012

Teddybear Airdrop Minsk 2012 was an aerial event that took place over Belarus on July 4, 2012. An airplane, chartered by the Swedish advertising agency Studio Total, illegally entered the Belarusian airspace on July 4 and parachuted several hundred teddy bears with notes carrying pro-democracy messages. After denying for three weeks that the incident ever took place and calling the footage of the airdrop released by Studio Total a hoax, the Belarus government finally acknowledged on July 26, 2012, that the teddy bear airdrop did happen.

The event greatly angered the President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko, who viewed it as a significant national security failure. Lukashenko sacked two top generals, the heads of Belarus’ border guards and of Air Defense, for failing to intercept the Studio Total plane. The airdrop led to an escalating diplomatic crisis in relations between Belarus and Sweden. On August 3, 2012, Belarus expelled the Swedish Ambassador and subsequently ordered the remaining staff of the Swedish embassy to leave Belarus by the end of the month. Belarus also withdrew its ambassador and all of its embassy staff from Sweden.

On July 4, 2012, a small airplane, chartered by the Swedish advertising agency Studio Total and with two people on board, took off from an airfield in Lithuania and illegally entered the Belarus airspace, crossing the Belarusian border from Lithuania. The plane dropped several hundred teddy bears, carrying cards and notes with pro-democracy, pro-freedom of speech and protest messages, over the Belarusian town of Ivyanets, near Minsk. The organizers of the airdrop originally planned to drop some of the teddy bears over state government buildings in Minsk, but uncertainties over the fuel supply and also the fact that the plane had been contacted by the Belarusian air traffic controllers resulted in a decision to drop the bears over Ivyanets and then head back. The plane crossed back over the border into Lithuania without encountering any interference from the Belarusian military. Per Cromwell, the founder of Studio Total, was in a car on the ground in Ivyanets during the airdrop. Various newsreports put the total number of teddy bears dropped at around 800.

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Wikipedia