(Sokolka) Poland announced on Wednesday a crackdown against the migrants massed at the border with Belarus, where it said there are more attempts at crossings, and made more than fifty arrests, in the midst of a diplomatic crisis between Minsk and the European Union.
“In the past 24 hours, police have detained more than 50 people near Bialowieza after they crossed the border illegally,” regional police spokesman Tomasz Krupa told AFP.
According to him, two separate groups of migrants, some of whom fled after being arrested, are involved.
“The situation is not calm,” Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said Wednesday on Polish radio.
The minister added that small groups of migrants are currently trying to cross the border illegally between Belarus and Poland, a member of the European Union and NATO.
“Whereas two days ago we had a large group concentrated near Kuznica Bialostocka and there was […] an attempt to forcibly cross the border, we are now dealing with smaller, albeit furnished, groups simultaneously attacking the Polish border in several places, ”he said.
The minister also claimed that Belarusian officials were using the threat to force migrants to force the border.
Meanwhile, the Polish Defense Ministry tweeted two short videos on Wednesday of an alleged shot from an armed man in uniform on the Belarusian side of the border.
The videos show a group of migrants, including children, standing near the border on the Belarusian side.
European Council President Charles Michel is due to hold talks in Warsaw on the “EU border crisis” on Wednesday with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.
Tuesday, Mr. Morawiecki accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of being the “sponsor” of the wave of migrants trying to enter Poland from Belarus, assuring that this “hybrid” attack risked destabilizing the European Union.
Europeans have for months accused Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, an ally of Moscow, of fueling the crisis by issuing visas to migrants in revenge for European sanctions taken against his country for its repression of the opposition since the presidential election of 2020.