Thousands of migrants who arrived with a Belarusian visa in the hope of reaching the European Union were massed on the Polish border on Tuesday, Warsaw denouncing an “attack” orchestrated by Minsk and Moscow.
Arrived Monday in a wooded area on the eastern border of the European Union (EU), around 3,000 to 4,000 migrants, mainly Kurds, found themselves facing barbed wire and the large military device deployed by Warsaw, determined to stop them .
According to Minsk border guards, these migrants, who have improvised a camp on the Belarusian side, not far from the Polish village of Kuznica, are in an “extremely bad” physical and psychological state, notably in lack of water and food. .
Access to the site has been blocked to journalists, but footage released by authorities in both countries shows hundreds of men, women and children in tents or on the ground, lighting fires to keep warm. temperatures close to 0 ° C.
Belarusian border guards also accused Polish forces of using tear gas and exerting “psychological pressure” on migrants by “turning on loudspeakers, spotlights and strobe lights all night.” “Shots were also heard,” they said on Telegram.
Word war
The fate of these thousands of people was the subject throughout Tuesday of a war of words between Minsk and Warsaw.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Moscow, insisted that his country “will not kneel” in front of the EU, while assuring that it “was not looking for a fight”, aware of the risk of gear in the event of armed conflict.
Previously, Lukashenko had spoken with his Russian ally Vladimir Poutine by telephone, to which he complained of the “particularly worrying” deployment of Polish troops at the border, according to the Kremlin.
A sign that the tension is unprecedented, the Polish Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, spoke directly to accuse Moscow and the Russian president of being the real sponsor of the crisis.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko “is the executor of the latest attack, but this attack has its sponsor who is in Moscow and this sponsor is President Putin,” he said at a meeting of emergency of the Polish Parliament.
Human shields
“Migrants from the Middle East are brought to Belarus by plane and serve as human shields to destabilize the situation in Poland and the EU. Defending Poland’s borders means defending the eastern flank of NATO and the EU, ”he added.
Europeans have for weeks accused Alexander Lukashenko of fueling the crisis by issuing visas to migrants and bringing them to the border in revenge for the European sanctions adopted against his country for its repression of the opposition since the presidential election of 2020.
“This is part of the inhuman approach and real thugs of the Lukashenko regime,” said European Commission spokesperson Peter Stano in Brussels, announcing an intervention with 13 countries to prevent their nationals to embark for Belarus.
In total, Brussels said Tuesday to monitor twenty countries, including Russia, for their possible role in the transport of migrants to Belarus.
“This regime fuels the smuggling of migrants aimed at destabilizing the European Union”, for her part denounced the spokesperson for French diplomacy, Anne-Claire Legendre.
Political instrumentalisation
In return, Minsk criticizes Poland for failing in its humanitarian obligations by refusing to welcome migrants, who have arrived legally in Belarus, and warned Warsaw against “any provocation” and “belligerent actions” at the border.
For the Belarusian Defense Ministry, the massive deployment of Polish soldiers at the border constitutes a “violation of bilateral agreements”, Minsk not having been notified in advance.
On Monday, Brussels and Washington had already denounced this crisis as being an instrumentalisation of migrants for political ends by Belarus, as well as NATO, which condemned a “hybrid tactic”.
These tensions raise fears of a confrontation at the border, on the borders of the European Union, where armed troops have been deployed by the two countries.
At least ten migrants have died in the region since the start of the crisis, including seven on the Polish side of the border, according to the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza.