According to several governments, the migrant and refugee crisis on the borders with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia is far from over. “This problem will persist for months,” said Poland’s Defense Minister Mariusz Błaszczak on the Polish radio station RMF. In Tallinn, Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said after a meeting with Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki: “The pressure on our external border will continue because Lukashenko has not yet achieved his goals.”
The Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko told the BBC last Friday: “I will not arrest or detain migrants at the border, and if they advance, I will not stop them from now on because they do not come to my country, but go to yours . “
According to Poland’s Defense Minister Błaszczak, Lukashenko’s border units are now using a different tactic to guide the refugees: “Smaller groups try to cross the border at many points.” These actions would be “controlled by the Belarusian units”. Poland’s border guards reported on Sunday night that a group of around 100 migrants had tried to cross the border. Allegedly they were previously brought to the border by a Belarusian military truck. In addition, Polish units were pelted with stones and blinded with lasers.
The border guards did not publish any evidence to support these claims, and journalists are still banned from entering the border area. Estonia’s Prime Minister Kallas also spoke of “increasingly violent attempts to cross borders”. But here too there is no evidence.
he Lithuanian news portal Delfi shone on Sunday Interview with an Iraqi Kurd from a group of 13 men. Originally they all wanted to go to Germany, says the man, but then changed their plans and tried to contact the Iraqi embassy in Moscow to organize their return home. Instead, however, they were brought to the border with Lithuania in Minsk by Belarusian security forces using military trucks.
The border protection authorities said that on Saturday night around 20 migrants tried to cross the border into Latvia, 140 to Lithuania and 350 to Poland. By Sunday morning, Poland’s border guards reported 208 attempts to cross the border. According to Prime Minister Morawiecki, “far fewer migrants from Turkey and Iraq are already coming to Belarus”.
In both countries, airlines have stopped carrying non-Belarusians on flights to Minsk. This was preceded by considerable diplomatic pressure from the EU and the Polish government. However, there are still thousands of migrants in Belarus. There are also other routes there, for example via Russia.