Airlines limit Belarus flights to stop migrants from coming
With thousands of migrants stranded on the Polish-Belarusian border and international pressure mounting to end the volatile standoff on the doorstep of the European Union, several airlines took steps Friday to limit people from the Middle East from flying to Belarus.
The goal was to prevent migrants from making their way to the border of Poland, an EU country, where they are stranded in freezing conditions in what aid groups say is a deepening humanitarian crisis.
Western European officials have accused Belarus’ autocratic leader, Alexander Lukashenko, of orchestrating the passage of migrants into his country and then to the border. The officials say he is essentially using the migrants as weapons to retaliate against the EU for imposing sanctions after he claimed victory in a disputed 2020 election.
At the same time, Russia, a crucial ally for Lukashenko, sent mixed signals regarding its stance on Belarus’ actions. The Kremlin undermined Lukashenko’s threat to cut off the flow of natural gas through his country to Western Europe, saying Russia would fulfill its commitment to provide gas to the EU.
“Russia was, is and will remain a country that fulfills all of its obligations in supplying European customers with gas,” Dmitri Peskov, the spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, said Friday. “The reliability of Russia as a supplier and a partner on current and future contracts is not in doubt.”
But it also flexed its military might in a show of continuing solidarity with a country it has steadfastly backed since the migrant crisis intensified this week. On Friday, a subdivision of Russian paratroopers flew to Belarus from Russia aboard military transport planes and landed in the Grodno region, near the Polish border, for exercises with Belarusian troops, the Russian Defense Ministry said.
One of the more striking aspects of the crisis is the way migrants have made their way to the border — flying to Belarus, often with the assistance of travel agents, and then moving to the border in large groups under the watch of the Belarusian security apparatus.
But Friday, the European Commission announced that Turkish Airlines suspended sales of one-way tickets to Minsk and that Iraqi airlines would not resume their flights to Belarus. The suspensions are potentially significant because relatively few airlines serve Minsk and those are two of the largest.
The Belarusian airline, Belavia — which operates joint flights with Turkish airlines from Istanbul — also announced that Iraqi, Syrian and Yemeni citizens would no longer be allowed to board flights to Belarus.
Access for journalists along the border has been restricted by all the nations involved, making it difficult to independently assess the scale of the humanitarian suffering. Most of those who are stranded are on the Belarus side of the border.