There are fears that Belarus is using migrants to put pressure on the EU following the sanctions it has received. Poland and Lithuania are responding by building walls.
There is a new, volatile migration flashpoint in Europe. Thousands of people, mainly from the Middle East, have in recent weeks reached the border between Belarus and Poland, as well as the border with Lithuania. Brussels's accusation is that the regime of Belarusian president Aleksandr Lukashenko is luring migrants onto its territory by granting them visas, then escorting them to the border as a form of pressure following the severe sanctions imposed on the country by the European Union.
Many have already crossed the border, others are camped near it, and several deaths have been recorded. Poland and Lithuania have deployed the army to the frontier and have also begun building walls and barriers.
According to the latest figures, at least two thousand people are located near the border between Belarus and Poland, along the road running from the village of Bruzgi to that of Kuźnica. A spokesperson for the Warsaw government spoke of as many as four thousand people. Several hundred more are in the border area between Belarus and Lithuania.
These areas have turned into a kind of no man's land. Some videos show Belarusian authorities escorting migrants to the border to push them into entering neighbouring countries; testimonies from the migrants themselves, however, describe being prevented from turning back. Crossing the border is becoming ever more difficult, given that Poland alone has deployed around 12,000 officers and soldiers to guard its territory. Warsaw and Vilnius have begun work on building walls and barriers along the border with Belarus, making it even harder for people to cross. Clouds of tear gas engulf those who try to get through.
Meanwhile, winter is beginning to make itself felt. Temperatures are dropping to zero, with women and children having spent days camped in makeshift tent cities and in the woods. Around ten deaths have already been recorded since the crisis broke out a few weeks ago. In recent hours, gunshots were heard in the border area between Belarus and Poland, with the authorities of both countries trading blame.
Various testimonies gathered on the ground describe how Belarus has in recent weeks launched a policy of granting visas and organising flights for migrants, particularly from the Middle East. A woman told the British newspaper the Guardian that she had arrived in Belarus on a scheduled flight arranged by an agency — a form of migration very different from the longer, more complex crossings we are accustomed to reading about.
Poland, Lithuania and the European Union more broadly are accusing Lukashenko of using migrants as a weapon of blackmail and pressure against them — a form of retaliation. This comes after Brussels imposed a series of sanctions on Minsk in recent months over its persistent violations of human rights and democratic norms, including when it diverted a scheduled Ryanair flight to arrest opposition journalist Roman Protasevich. The European Commission has now announced further sanctions in response to the border events of recent days. For its part, Minsk denies any deliberate facilitation of irregular immigration into the European Union.
Meanwhile, the figures paint a clear picture of how the situation has changed since October: of the 23,000 illegal crossings from Belarus into Poland recorded in 2021, roughly half took place last month alone. And the country has declared a state of emergency, something Lithuania is also about to do.
