Poles start building a new iron curtain
130-mile razor-wire barrier to seal border amid fears of Kremlin plot to flood EU with asylum seekers
Poland yesterday began fortifying its border with the Russian region of Kaliningrad amid fears the Kremlin will flood the EU with migrants.
Warsaw alleges that Vladimir Putin is plotting to destabilise Europe with a flood of asylum seekers after Russia’s aviation authority approved a raft of new flights from the Middle East and north africa to Kaliningrad.
Mariusz Blaszczak, Poland’s defence minister, said the temporary razor-wire barrier was aimed at ‘sealing’ off its 130- mile frontier with the Russian territory.
Sandwiched between Poland and lithuania, Kaliningrad is cut off from the rest of Russia except by sea – making it technically a semi-exclave.
a year ago Putin’s close ally, Belarusian despot alexander lukashenko, was accused of sending migrants into the EU in response to sanctions slapped on his regime.
That move prompted Poland to erect a steel wall on its border with Belarus that was comrazor pleted in June of this year to stop the migrant flow.
‘We want the border to be tight,’ said Mr Blaszczak. ‘The task of the government is to ensure the security of Poland.’
Soldiers started laying the wire in the village of Wisztyniec yesterday, where the borders of Poland, lithuania and Russia meet. The barrier will be 10ft wide and 8ft tall.
Warsaw said the situation on the frontier with Kaliningrad, seized by the Soviet Union from Germany in 1945, was ‘stable and calm’.
But its spokesman anna Michalska added: ‘after what happened on the Polish-Belarusian border we are even more prepared for everything, for all of the darkest scenarios.’
The Polish government and its Baltic allies – Estonia, lithuania and latvia – said lukashenko had tried to destabilise the EU by allowing refugees to cross into Europe.
It prompted a state of emergency along the 780- mile stretch of the Belarusian frontier that borders the four EU nations. Poland sent thousands of troops and police officers to reinforce border guard patrols at the height of the crisis and approved a law allowing migrants to be forced back into Belarus.
Frontex, the EU’s border agency, said it had detected 8,184 illegal crossings at the Belarusian border last year.
Many others will have made it into the EU, potentially as a stepping-stone to Britain.
‘Prepared for a dark scenario’