The Polish Border Guard Service reported that 612 illegal border crossings were made on 18 October alone. In total, more than 10 thousand such attempts were made in October, transfers Reuters. In the border zone, the Polish authorities introduced state of emergency, and at the border decided put up a fence made of barbed wire 2.5 meters high.
Many of those migrants who managed to sneak across the border move further west and end up in Germany. In this regard, the leadership of the German police union asked the authorities to temporarily restore border control on the border with Poland. And the Brandenburg authorities in eastern Germany demanded to take tough measures against the regime of Alexander Lukashenko, who, as think in the EU, provokes a migration crisis.
Back in the summer, Poland and Lithuania appealed to the European Union to apply tougher measures against Belarus in connection with the migration crisis in the region. The EU believes that the Belarusian authorities take migrants to the borders and force them to move to the territory of Lithuania and Poland. These actions are called “hybrid aggression” in the European Union.
From the beginning of the year to the end of summer, more than 4 thousand illegal migrants were detained at the Lithuanian-Belarusian border. This is almost 50 times more than in the entire 2020.
Formerly, the Dossier Center of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the German edition of Der Spiegel published documents confirming that the Belarusian authorities were involved in the migration crisis in Lithuania. The transportation of Iraqi citizens to the Belarusian-Lithuanian border was carried out with the participation of the state travel company Tsentrkurort, which is part of the Office of the President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko. It is assumed that the flow of migrants is used by the Belarusian authorities to blackmail European countries, which are imposing sanctions against Minsk for suppressing the opposition and repression.
On August 9, Alexander Lukashenko announced that Belarus is ready to continue to receive tourists from the UAE, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, explaining this for economic reasons. At the same time, he denied accusations of organizing illegal migration.