Between Minsk and Warsaw, a geopolitical pass of arms is embedded in the daily lives of cross-border workers.
The distant rumble of a military convoy suddenly breaks the silence. There, in the hilly meadow, cows graze in the middle of an inert setting. Padlocked exchange offices, old-fashioned buildings next to dilapidated buildings, a service station without a living soul. And this main road, just as deserted. Bobrowniki, in the far east of Poland, looks like a ghost town.
You have to drive below the road, further, to understand the paralysis of the town: the border post is blocked by a barrier, condemned. Alexander Lukashenko’s Belarus lies there, across the Świsłacz River, which serves as the territorial boundary.
It is we, the drivers, who suffer from these sanctions. And this war no one needs.
It seems far away, the golden age of this locality of barely 100 inhabitants, a time punctuated by the incessant comings and goings of road hauliers, or even Belarusian holidaymakers for a day. Barely three weeks ago, business was running at full speed there. The closure of the border post on February 10th sounded the death knell for this hub. It was by invoking “state security” that, without warning, Warsaw locked this passage, one of the last until then accessible to the transport of goods on the Polish-Belarusian border.
A look of retaliation when, two days earlier, Belarusian justice, subservient to the despot of Minsk, sentenced Andrzej Poczobut, journalist and influential member of the Polish minority in Belarus, to eight years in prison. Responding to Poland, which has already banned road hauliers registered in Russia or Belarus since the spring of 2022 from setting foot on European soil – against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine -, Minsk has played the escalation. First, by refusing Polish trucks to cross the Lithuanian and Latvian borders, then by chasing three Polish diplomats from its territory.
stampede
Among the victims of this geopolitical pass of arms, there is the convenience store of Agnieszka Losota, along the road to Bobrowniki, where the purr of heavy goods vehicles is no more than a memory. “I have to throw away perishable products, I’ve never had any losses in 21 years,” laments the owner, dependent on cross-border trade. The rare clientele is now limited to the few soldiers patrolling the area. Beset by more than one crisis already, Bobrowniki found itself, in 2021, at the heart of the migratory influx fomented by the “last dictatorship in Europe” at the borders of the European Union, seeking revenge on the penalties against him.
Petition, phone calls, meetings with elected officials. With a handful of residents, Agnieszka Losota has since been campaigning for state compensation, the echo of which is favorable for the time being. The repercussions of this sanction, she warns, are likely to spread as far as the town of Białystok, oriented on the road to the defunct border post, some fifty kilometers to the west.
But no need to go that far. In Gródek, halfway between the two localities, it’s dead calm in Barbara Kułakowska’s hotel-restaurant. The stampede, too: “80% less income since February 10”, laments the entrepreneur. The dining room is empty, the bedrooms upstairs, all unoccupied. “We don’t know what will happen if help doesn’t come. Before, truckers stopped here all the time, and relations were always friendly with Belarusian tourists. »
And what fear? Belarus, an accomplice of Vladimir Putin, serves after all as a rear base for Moscow’s forces. “Lukashenko, it is true, is not a very reliable person”, understates Mme Kułakowska who, without being panicked like a part of the local population, gives rise to some concern, “because the Russian army is not very far away”.
The rag is burning
Poland thus barricades its eastern border a little more. On February 23, Defense Minister Mariusz Błaszczak announced an “extension of security measures” along Belarus and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad in the northeast, with heavy reinforcements of anti-tank hedgehogs and concrete blocks, without specifying the number. Real threat, or one-upmanship? “We cannot feel safe without this kind of infrastructure, in the face of an unpredictable regime”, justifies the Duty Lukasz Jasina, spokesperson for the Polish Foreign Ministry. This is without forgetting the anti-migrant wall inaugurated at the gates of Belarus in the summer of 2022, and the other in the process of being erected on the edge of Kaliningrad.
Relations between Warsaw and Minsk, at loggerheads, have never really been in good shape since 1989. But the rag is burning more than ever. Land of exile and fervent support of Belarusian dissidence, Poland willingly takes the opposite view of its neighbor in full totalitarian drift. The Polish authorities, by dint of cracking down on the repression – among others – of the irremovable autocrat, “seem to be short of sanctions, but still wanted to react to the conviction of Poczobut”, estimates Kacper Wanczyk, analyst for the group of Polityka Insight reflection. Hence the suspension of the Bobrowniki border post, “an option that Warsaw had been considering for a while”, according to the former diplomat.
Poland thinks it’s above everything, that it closes its entire border if it wants to, but the Poles will suffer, not the Belarusians.
A measure whose objective is in any case to “close one of the windows of Belarus to the west”, assures Lukasz Jasina, of Foreign Affairs. “The Belarusian economy is completely controlled by Lukashenko. We want to show that we cannot act as if nothing had happened and let the officials do their shopping in Poland, ”he illustrates. While warning that Warsaw “does not rule out closing the Terespol crossing”.
“New Berlin Wall”
Terespol, a little further south, is the last open crossing point on the Belarusian border, for individuals and truckers alike. The scene at the foot of the customs terminal embodies, if there is one, the execrable state of Minsk-Warsaw relations: a row of trucks stretching as far as the eye can see in the dark, rubbish accumulating on the bottom -coast. The wait there was already long before the war, but the closure of Bobrowniki made it an even bigger bottleneck.
“These truckers who are the crane foot also have their physiological needs, recalls Krzystof Iwaniuk, mayor of Terespol. The problem is between Minsk and Warsaw, not between ordinary people. We are in one of the poorest regions of the country, and Terespol is on the Chinese silk road. What interests us is making money. “The city councilor, who calls for a pacification of relations, even fears” a new Berlin wall, if the passage of Terespol were to close in turn “.
Behind the wheel, Aleksander, a 45-year-old driver from Grodno, is losing patience. “Poland thinks it’s above everything, that it closes its entire border, if it wants to, but the Poles will suffer, not the Belarusians! A few bumpers further, Sergei, 46, is also Belarusian. Four days he waits in the cockpit, he finally prepares to cross. “It is us, the drivers, who suffer from these sanctions. And this war no one needs. »