Poland Accuses Russia Of Backing Belarusian 'Attack' As Migrant Border Standoff Intensifies
According to RFE/RL, Poland has accused Belarus of staging an “attack” on its eastern border and Russian President Vladimir Putin of orchestrating an intensifying migration crisis to destabilize the European Union as hundreds of migrants remained trapped in the open in freezing temperatures at the bloc's eastern frontier.
Polish authorities bolstered the border on November 9 as the migrants gathered on the Belarusian side of the frontier after attempting to break through razor-wire fencing the previous day to enter EU-member Poland.
In recent months, thousands of migrants from the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa have attempted to illegally enter Poland and fellow EU members Latvia and Lithuania from Belarus.
The EU has accused Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka of flying in migrants and funneling them to the bloc's borders to retaliate against Brussels for sanctions imposed over a sweeping crackdown since last year’s disputed presidential election.
"This attack which Lukashenka is conducting has its mastermind in Moscow, the mastermind is President Putin," Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told an emergency session of the Polish parliament on November 9.
"The Belarusian regime is attacking the Polish border, the EU, in an unparalleled manner," Polish President Andrzej Duda said at a news conference in Warsaw earlier in the day.
"We currently have a camp of migrants who are blocked from the Belarusian side. There are about 1,000 people there, mostly young men. These are aggressive actions that we must repel, fulfilling our obligations as a member of the European Union," he said.
Hundreds of migrants shivered in freezing temperatures and huddled around campfires on the Belarusian border with Poland overnight in front of razor-wire fences and lines of Polish border guards blocking their entry into the European Union.
On November 9, Lithuania became the second EU country to declare a state of emergency at its border with Belarus and at camps hosting migrants who arrived from there.
The parliament in Vilnius declared the state of emergency, which begins at midnight local time on November 9 and will a month, allowing border guards to use "mental coercion" and "proportional physical violence" to prevent migrants from entering Lithuania.
Poland has already imposed a state of emergency at the border and increased the number of soldiers and guards to 20,000. Lawmakers have also approved the building of a $407 million wall on its eastern border.
