It is a serious political crisis that erupted in the past few hours on the border between Poland and Belarus, where on Monday 8 November hundreds of people gathered at the border to join the European Union. Both the European Commission and the Atlantic Alliance have accused the Belarusian regime of orchestrating the arrival of refugees and migrants from the Middle East. Here in Brussels, the Twenty-seven are studying new sanctions against Minsk, which are under discussion among foreign ministers, perhaps as early as next Monday.
The alarm was raised on 8 November in the late morning by a spokesman for the Polish government, Stanislaw Zaryn, who posted images from the border on Twitter showing the presence of hundreds of people at the border. On the occasion, he accused the Belarusian forces of inducing migrants to cross the border. Subsequently, the executive led by Conservative Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki called an emergency meeting to discuss the situation.
Minsk: Poland avoid provoking
Minsk, for its part, on Tuesday morning warned Poland against any “provocation” on the border between the two countries, where thousands of migrants gather in the hope of joining the EU. “We want to warn the Polish side in advance against the use of any provocation” against Belarus “to justify any illegal bellicose actions” against migrants. This was announced by a note from the Minsk Foreign Ministry.
Von der Leyen: “Minsk exploits migrants”
For some time now, migrants flying from Iraq, Afghanistan and Turkey have been trying to cross the external border of the European Union via Belarus. In a statement, the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen warned that “the exploitation of migrants for political purposes by Belarus is unacceptable”. From Berlin, the spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel, Steffen Seibert, added: “The Minsk regime behaves like a migrant smuggler, and Europe will take a stand together.”
Brussels claims that President Alexander Lukashenko wants to take revenge for the sanctions that the Twenty-Seven have imposed on Belarus in the wake of the regime’s severe repressions against political opposition to the current government. Minsk denies any misuse of migrants. Yet 10 people died at the border between the two countries, blocked between Belarus and Poland, according to the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza (see The sun 24 hours of 25 September).