Poland pulled troops to the border with Belarus. The migration crisis may develop into an armed crisis
A column of migrants numbering more than a thousand people headed this morning to the Bruzgi checkpoint on the Belarusian-Polish border.
After reports of this appeared in the media, Poland was declared on alert. The country's Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak wrote on Twitter that more than 12 thousand Polish soldiers are on duty at the border.
The Polish Foreign Ministry called the column of migrants that reached the border the largest of all that have taken place so far. According to Polish media, the movement of cars through the checkpoint has actually been stopped. Warsaw observers hastened to accuse the Belarusian authorities of the fact that it was official Minsk that organized the march of migrants to the border.
However, it soon became clear that this was not the case. A video calling for people to gather and go to the Polish border was posted on Facebook on the evening of November 6 by Kurdish refugees. The migrants were going to go to the checkpoint in order to legally cross the border of Belarus and then ask the Poles to let them into Poland. But it was the Belarusian border guards who drove the refugees off the road.
Then the Kurds went into the forest and began to make attempts to break through the wire fence on the border. Some of them were successful, and groups of 10-15 people slipped to the Polish side. In other places, the refugees met resistance: Polish border guards used some kind of gas against them. Drones and even helicopters were also involved.
By mid-day, Lithuania was also worried. They also planned to introduce a state of emergency. Vilnius began to gather troops to the border. The head of the State Border Guard Service, Rustamas Lyubaevas, estimated the number of migrants from 1 thousand to five thousand people.
The Belarusian Border Committee issued a statement that “all these people, including women and children, do not pose a security threat and do not behave aggressively.”
“According to the stories of the refugees themselves, they self-organized into such a large group in order to prevent forced displacement by the Polish side, as well as to attract international attention to Poland’s actions in terms of non-compliance with human rights,” the statement says.
At the same time, the Belarusian border guards themselves do not rule out “provocative actions by the Polish side aimed at justifying the use of physical force and special means against refugees” and also serve in enhanced mode in order to prevent provocations if necessary.
“Poland is ready to use tanks and weapons against migrants on the Polish-Belarusian border, and, possibly, organize an armed provocation against Belarusian border guards. We carefully monitor who comments on this and how. A very clear marker of an ally and an enemy in a situation of real confrontation with the most aggressive country in the Western world, which in August 2020 tried to carry out a coup in Belarus, organize a hybrid special operation with the aim of capturing Grodno and the surrounding area,” wrote Belarusian political scientist Alexey in his Telegram channel Dzermant.
His Russian colleague Marat Bashirov suggests that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is capable of further aggravating the crisis.
“If refugees set up camp in the neutral zone between Belarus and Poland, the latter will find itself in a very difficult situation. This will be a multi-day series about evil Poles and unfortunate Kurds. But Old Man can fit them tents and field kitchens. Now imagine that such camps will begin to multiply along the entire border of Poland and the Baltic states,” the expert wrote.
Belarusian TV presenter Igor Tur assures that Poland just needs to ask Lukashenko, and the migration crisis will end.
“Can Lukashenko take up the issue of migrants and close the channel? With a snap of fingers, there may be no migrants on the territory of Belarus by tomorrow morning. The system has been ready for this for a long time. Well, ask Lukashenko. He will solve everything in a day. Here we need to decide - either a proud democratic self-inflicted self-inflicted shot in the foot, or adequate cooperation,” Tur openly blackmails.
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