Belarus: Lukashenko’s game with migrants

Status: 09.11.2021 12:51 p.m.

Belarus is shifting responsibility for the migration movements towards the Polish border to the EU and especially to Germany. His country has done a lot to open this new route.

By Christina Nagel, ARD Studio Moscow

More and more migrants are coming. It could be 4,000, estimated a Belarusian reporter on Russian television that evening. Much of what has been going on on the Belarusian-Polish border since yesterday remains unclear, because only a few journalists can and are allowed to see the situation for themselves on site. It is only clear that this has changed dramatically: Up until now, smaller groups of migrants had tried to somehow get into the European Union through the forests. Now the Polish border guards face thousands.

The Polish side does not believe in coincidence. There are indications that the migrants are being directed in a targeted manner. At least, as videos show, they are not stopped by the Belarusian border guards. Just as the ruler Alexander Lukashenko announced in July:

We will never stop anyone. You don’t come to us. You go to enlightened, warm, comfortable Europe. Europe, especially Germany, where there are not enough workers, invited these people.

A whole new escape route

Belarus has nothing to do with any of this, Lukashenko said. However, this not only doubts the EU, but also the Belarusian opposition in exile. Opposition politician Pavel Latuschko emphasizes that there has never been a natural escape route via Belarus.

In fact, the number of illegal border crossings in Lithuania only increased after Lukashenko announced that he would allow migrants to move freely into the European Union in response to the sanctions imposed by the West on his power apparatus. He told Western journalists at the time that it had nothing to do with blackmail:

“You give us conditions to which we have to react. And we react, excuse me, as we can. Many criticize me for it. Well. I’m sorry, I don’t have the options like Russia, China, the USA , the EU or the Soviet Union. If I had such opportunities, I would react differently! “

Advertising in the home countries

Migrants report on organized tours advertised in their home countries, which are supposed to lead to the EU via Minsk. The exile opposition is convinced that the smuggling in its current form would not be possible without the blessing of the regime.

For Belarus, Lukashenko himself emphasized that there was absolutely no reason to do anything. The question alone is absurd: “You have unleashed a hybrid war against us and demand that we still protect you ?!”

The flight plan would be a lever

It has already been shown that this is fundamentally possible: When there were briefly no more flights from the Iraqi capital to Minsk, the situation at the EU’s external border also eased.

With the winter flight schedule, however, there are significantly more flights from the Middle East to Belarus: from Baghdad, Dubai, Istanbul and Damascus.

Lukashenko’s “Migration Policy”

Christina Nagel, ARD Moscow, November 9, 2021 12:17 p.m.

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