Tensions escalate at Poland-Belarus border
Autocratic leader of Belarus accused of engineering the crisis that has stranded crowds of migrants in dire conditions
Astandoff over migrants along the European Union’s eastern flank, one EU leaders say has been manufactured by the authoritarian government of Belarus, is growing more volatile, highlighting the raw emotions driving a crisis on that country’s border with Poland.
The only casualties have been the migrants, stuck in the struggle between Belarus and countries on the front line of the EU, like Poland and Lithuania. Amid growing fears of a humanitarian disaster in the thick forests that straddle the border, a 14-year-old Kurdish boy from Iraq was reported by Polish news media to have frozen to death overnight on the Belarus side of the frontier.
Eight others, according to the official count, died earlier from exposure.
Aid workers, who are barred along with journalists and independent doctors from entering the border zone, believe the real death toll is higher and will rise sharply as winter sets in and pushes already freezing temperatures even lower.
Western leaders have accused Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus’ autocratic leader, of engineering the crisis, creating a path into EU countries for migrants from the Middle East. His aim, they say, is to punish Poland and Lithuania for harboring dissidents and other opponents of his government and to pressure the EU into lifting sanctions. Western members of the United Nations Security Council condemned Belarus’ actions Thursday.
In a statement posted Thursday on Facebook, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki of Poland compared events on the border to those that cost Poland its statehood more than a century ago. While stressing the situation now “is not so dramatic,” he said: “What we are dealing with is a new type of war. This is a war in which civilians and media messages are the ammunition.”
Poland and Lithuania, both members of NATO as well as the EU, have poured thousands of soldiers into the frontier zone to help border guards and police officers beat back what they describe as a “hybrid war” by Lukashenko.
Lukashenko, for his part, reeled off threats to his country’s Western neighbors even as the Kremlin, his main benefactor, said it was working to resolve the situation and described the buildup of military force along the border as “a matter of utmost concern to all sober-thinking people in Europe.”
In a sign of the escalating tensions, Poland’s Defense Ministry on Thursday reported its soldiers in the border area of Bialowieza had fired warning shots into the air the previous day after “a group of several hundred migrants attempted to cross the border by force.” The migrants, the ministry said, threw objects at the soldiers and then tried to destroy a border fence.
President Vladimir Putin of Russia spoke to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany for the second day in a row about the crisis, the Kremlin said, but he repeated his desire that European officials speak directly to their Belarusian counterparts. That is a nonstarter for many in the West, who believe Lukashenko stole an election last year and consider his rule to be illegitimate.
Lukashenko told government officials in a televised meeting Thursday he had agreed Russia would patrol the country’s western borders with nuclear-capable bombers. He also said he could shut down the flow of a major pipeline carrying natural gas from Russia to Western Europe via Belarus if the West escalated sanctions. That, however, is highly unlikely as it would risk rupturing relations with Moscow, which owns the gas and whose support is vital to Lukashenko’s political survival.
In Poland, the government’s hard-line policy and its decision to forbid all nonresidents, including aid workers and European officials, from entering the border zone has played well with its right-wing base among Polish nationalists, who Thursday held an annual march through the center of Warsaw to celebrate Independence Day.
The policy has also won support from fellow members of the European bloc, despite angry feuding between Warsaw and Brussels over the rule of law, LGBT rights and other issues. The nationalist ruling party, Law and Justice, has seized on the crisis with Belarus to trumpet Poland’s role as guardian of Europe’s eastern frontier and to counter claims the country is undermining the union.
In a speech at the start of an Independence Day march featuring far-right activists in Warsaw, Robert Bakiewicz, head of a nationalist group that organized the event, drew cheers and applause when he praised Polish soldiers, border guards and police officers who he said were defending the nation by keeping out the migrants.
“Poland is under attack,” he said, “Today, it is the duty of every Polish patriot to support the state.”
Extremist elements in the crowd, which also included young families pushing baby carriages, shouted demands border guards shoot migrants instead of just pushing them back into Belarus when they cross into Poland.
Warsaw police said several people had been detained but added the march, in contrast to some previous years, had gone off without violence. A big reason for that was a decision by opponents of the Law and Justice party to cancel plans for a rival march in the same place. They gathered instead for a small rally in a different part of Warsaw.
Thousands of migrants, many of them Iraqi Kurds, have been escorted to the borders of Poland, Lithuania and Latvia under the watchful eyes of Belarusian authorities, according to EU officials. And once there, they are stranded in bitter cold, prevented from entering the EU or from going back into Belarus.
The Iraqi embassy in Moscow announced Thursday it will organize the evacuation of citizens stranded in Belarus who wish to return home, an offer that is unlikely to be taken up by many of those who risked their lives and spent thousands of dollars trying to escape the country.