Lukashenko’s migrant ‘invasion’ escalates with 1,000 people ready to cross from Belarus into Poland

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Poland has vowed to ‘defend Europe’ from a ‘migrant invasion’ unleashed by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko whose forces have coerced more than 1,000 refugees to smash through the border.

Desperate migrants gathered at the Belarusian frontier with Poland on Monday, attempting to hack down a barbed-wire fence only to meet a phalanx of Polish guards who forced them back with pepper spray.

Middle Eastern and African migrants have been flown into Belarus by Lukashenko who is using them as human cannon fodder in his battle with the EU, the US and Britain, after they imposed sanctions following a violent political crackdown last year, which included forcing a Ryanair flight from the sky in May. 

Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said: ‘The Polish government is determined and we will defend the security of our country and the entire EU, respecting our international obligations and bearing in mind, above all, the interests of the state and the safety of Polish soldiers, Border Guard officers and citizens.’ 

Warsaw called today’s action ‘an invasion’ and declared it was sending 12,000 troops to reinforce 10,000 already stationed along the frontier.  

Polish soldiers were seen pepper-spraying the migrants from behind a barbed-wire barrier as the desperate people tried to hack it down with branches and spades. 

At other sections of the line, small children were held up by desperate parents who pleaded with the Polish forces to let them through, while others chanted: ‘Germany,’ renowned for its hospitality towards refugees.  

A NATO official called the use of migrants ‘a hybrid tactic’, meaning a combined military-political operation, and said: ‘NATO stands ready to further assist our allies, and maintain safety and security in the region’.  

Poland’s ambassador to the UN Krzysztof Szczerski said: ‘Due to the situation on the eastern border of Poland, I am in contact with the ambassadors of the USA, Great Britain, France, Ireland and Estonia to the United Nations in New York – members of the Security Council.’

The pledge comes as deputy head of Poland’s Interior Ministry said: ‘At the moment, a regular battle is taking place near Kuźnice.

‘The Border Guard, the Police and the Polish Army are defending our border against the attack of migrants inspired and prepared by Lukashenko.’

Poland’s Secret Service minister Stanislaw Zaryn said there was ‘between 3,000 and 4,000 people in the vicinity of the Polish border.’

‘Migrants, and subsequent transports arrive in Belarus from Arab countries. – Polish borders are attacked in an organized manner, we will strengthen forces,’ he said.

The former President of the European Community has now called upon NATO to help with the mounting crisis on Poland’s border with Belarus.

Donald Tusk said Poland should consider triggering Article 4 of the Nato treaty, under which all member states are obliged to meet to examine issues of mutual concern including threats to territorial integrity, political independence or security.

Speaking at a press conference on Monday, Tusk who is the leader of Poland’s main opposition party Platforma Obywatelska said he was ‘very concerned about what is happening today and what will probably happen in the hours to come on our eastern border.’

He added: ‘Our relations with our eastern neighbour are about to deteriorate even further.

‘What is most important is perhaps to consider whether we should trigger Nato’s Article 4 if our border is under direct threat from physical pressure with Belarusian involvement, and I mean Belarusian state services.’

Charities say the migrants face gruelling conditions while trying to cross the border from Belarus, enduring freezing weather and a lack of food, water and medical attention. 

There are more than a thousand people in the group of refugees near the border with Poland, including many women and children, reported RIA Novosti after speaking with Belarusian border guards.

The border guards said that migrants ‘do not pose a threat yet,’ but their statements came amid reports that Lukashenko was sending heavily armed riot police towards the border.

‘At the moment, a large group of refugees with belongings are moving along the road to the border with Poland,’ said the Belarusian border committee in a statement.

Meanwhile, Poland’s Deputy Foreign Minister Piotr Wawrzyk said on Polish public radio this weekend: ‘Belarus wants to cause a major incident, preferably with shots fired and casualties.

‘According to media reports, they are preparing a major provocation near Kuznitsa Bialostocka (a Polish town right next to the Bruzgi-Kuznitsa border checkpoint), that there will be an attempt at a mass border crossing.’  

Stanislav Zharyn, Minister-Coordinator of the Polish Intelligence Service, was equally as direct, tweeting: ‘the largest attempt at a military invasion of Poland has begun.’

‘A large group of migrants has gathered in Belarus, near the border with Poland. They will try to enter Poland en masse’.

‘New information shows that the group is under the strict control of armed Belarusians. They are the ones who decide the direction the group takes,’ Zaryn said.

Poland’s Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Maciej Wasik said its frontier guards, police and army were on duty.

‘The Polish services are ready for any scenario,’ he said.  

But Russian authorities have declared their support of Lukashenko and Belarus’ role in the crisis. 

Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin said: ‘We have no doubt that the Belarusian migration service is taking all necessary steps to keep everything legal.

‘Of course, we do not doubt that [they are] taking into account [our] considerations and possible concerns in regard to the fact that migrants may end up in our territory as well.’

‘Measures are being taken, but the situation is, of course, tricky.’

Russia is one of Belarus’ only allies, as the EU-bloc, the UK and the US all oppose his presidency following an alleged rigged election last year.  

Belarusian authorities have since attempted to lay the responsibility for the refugees, who have been gathered for weeks in cold temperatures along the Belarusian-Polish border, at Poland’s feet.

‘The refugees were prompted to such a step of despair by the indifference and inhuman attitude of the Polish authorities,’ they said. 

‘The Belarusian side is taking the necessary measures to ensure the smooth functioning of international communication channels, as well as the safety of people moving along the highway.’ 

Humanitarian groups have also accused Poland’s ruling nationalists of violating the international right to asylum by pushing migrants back into Belarus instead of accepting their applications for protection. 

The Poles meanwhile say Belarusian authorities are entirely responsible for exploiting vulnerable people from Iraq, Syria and other countries and pushing them towards the EU, with regular flights to Minsk from these nations.

Latvia and Lithuania have also faced an influx of immigrants in recent months.

Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Facebook that ‘the Polish border is not just a line on a map. The border is sacred – Polish blood has been spilled for it!’

Warsaw and the EU say the build-up of migrants on the border is part of an organised action by the Belarusian government aimed at destabilizing the bloc in retaliation for Western sanctions. 

Jerzy Marek Nowkowski, President of the Euro-Atlantic Association, said: ‘It is Lukashenko’s dream that shots would be fired at the border, and that perhaps one of the Polish or Belarusian border guards would be killed in the shootout.

‘This is clearly the aim of Lukashenko’s entire operation, because, after all, he is not concerned with immigrants but with maintaining and expanding his power, his position, his games within the Belarusian power elite and in his relations with Russia.

‘In order to prevent an escalation, we must above all keep our nerves in check and not allow ourselves to be provoked.’ 

Poland´s Border Guard have also reported incidents of hostile behavior and threats by Belarusian forces directed across the border at Polish forces.

On Friday there was a report that ‘a Belarusian soldier attempted to fire a flare gun at Polish soldiers. Luckily, the gun didn’t go off,’ according to the Warsaw defence ministry.

In another incident, the ministry reported that ‘five armed Belarusians attempted to destroy a fence, shouting that they would be shooting at Polish soldiers.

‘After additional forces of the Border Service and the Army were called for, the Belarusians retreated’.

There have been calls for walls on the Belarus borders with EU and NATO states Poland, Lithuania and Latvia amid the escalating tensions and the mounting number of migrants trying to enter the EU from Lukashenko’s nation. 

A grotesque game of human ping-pong: IAN BIRRELL reveals how Belarus has flown in thousands of migrants from the Middle East and Africa – then sent them into Poland en route to a new life in the West… But the Poles don’t want them

By IAN BIRRELL IN BIALOWIEZA FOREST, POLAND FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY 

We met deep inside Europe’s last remaining primeval forest, where bison and wolves roam beneath ancient towering oaks. ‘I am an IT professional and I had a good life,’ Hussan told me. ‘But now I am standing in the woods with bare feet and dirty hands.’

Hussan, 41, lived happily in the Syrian city of Homs before it was shattered by bombs, bullets and feuding militia, forcing him to flee to Turkey.

Tears flowed down his face when I asked about his family, then he spoke in English of his dream to find sanctuary in Britain. Instead, he finds himself in Bialowieza Forest, a fearful refugee hiding from Polish security forces seeking to send him back over the nearby border to Belarus.

For this is the latest front line in Europe’s migration crisis. Hussan is just one of many bedraggled pawns in a cruel global power game being played by Belarus’s sinister dictator Alexander Lukashenko, who has ‘weaponised’ migration by luring people from the Middle East and Africa to his country, then despatching them to next-door EU nations.

This policy is designed to stoke divisions and destabilise the EU in retaliation for sanctions imposed after the autocrat sparked world outcry by forcing a Ryanair passenger jet carrying an opposition activist to divert to the Belarusian capital Minsk, where he was seized and then paraded on television.

Politicians across Europe accuse Lukashenko of launching a ‘hybrid war’ backed by Moscow. ‘Refugees and asylum-seekers are being brought to the border with the aim of intimidating Brussels and Poland,’ said Marcin Swiecicki, an MP and former mayor of Warsaw. ‘The situation is a tragedy.’

True. But Lukashenko’s cynical tactics seem to be working, with EU countries spending millions of euros on border walls, bickering about how best to respond and the far-Right seeking to exploit the human misery for its own ends.

Taxi drivers in the Polish city of Bialystok, close to the border, told me of seeing even cars with UK licence plates arriving to pick up arrivals from Belarus. ‘We see so many migrants and traffickers,’ said one, called Pawel. ‘You can see English, French and German plates on cars coming to collect people.’

In Germany, where police say up to 1,000 people are arriving every day, armed vigilante patrols of Right-wing extremists have been found operating at the frontier.

A record 200 crossings into Lithuania were attempted on one day recently. Others have begun trying to reach Europe via Ukraine.

Two months ago I reported in The Mail on Sunday about the surge into Lithuania, but focus has shifted to Poland. Officials logged 16,800 efforts at illegal entry last month – four times more each day than for the whole of last year. Hussan was in a group of 20 people from Iraq, Egypt and Syria whom I found sitting around small fires, craving food and dry clothes while drinking water from a small stream.

He said he had been pushed back and forth over the frontier four times in a fortnight in a grotesque game of human ping-pong being played by Polish and Belarus guards. Others said they were bounced over the border 20 times. There are reports of beatings, injured migrants ejected from Polish hospitals and families trapped in a militarised no-man’s land on the Belarus side. At least ten people have died and many more lives are at risk as winter temperatures plummet.

‘I’m so tired and it’s so cold that I am shaking,’ said Hussan. ‘We are scared at night because of the wild animals so we hide our heads under our clothes.’

He spent all his £1,000 savings to get here. ‘Life is a disaster. We’ve gone from our home in Syria to being trapped between two borders because no one wants us in their country. But we are human too.’

Hussan left his wife and four children in Turkey. But his group included an Iraqi man with his nine-year-old son.

Elsewhere in the forest, I met a woman called Sarah who is five months pregnant. The 26-year-old claimed to have spent 28 days in the forest with her husband Hassan, after flying to Belarus. Officials then took them to the country’s border with Lithuania. They were caught after crossing the frontier, then taken across to the Polish border on the other side of the country. They had been pushed back nine times, she said, despite asking each time for asylum.

This sudden influx of migrants is stirring tensions in Poland, a divided country currently run by an ultra-conservative government at loggerheads with Brussels on gay rights, pollution and the supremacy of EU law. There is even talk that the country might follow Britain and leave the union.

‘We put the security of our fatherland above everything,’ said Poland’s defence minister, Mariusz Blaszczak.

The defence ministry said that on Wednesday, Belarusian soldiers threatened to open fire on Polish forces who found a group of 250 migrants and refugees at the border. Nato says it is concerned about the ‘escalating’ situation.

Poland is one of ten countries that asked Brussels to pay for ‘barriers’ to block migrants – a request denied by EU chief Ursula von der Leyen, who says Brussels should not fund ‘barbed wire and walls’. In defiance, Poland is spending £300 million on a wall along the 260-mile border with Belarus. Critics say it will be a costly failure, taking years to construct in forests and swamps. Lithuania has also started building an 11ft-high steel fence topped with razor wire on its frontier.

The Polish government has declared a state of emergency, sent 10,000 troops to assist frontier guards and banned outsiders from coming within 3km (1.9 miles) of the border.

In a war of words against Lukashenko, whose international pariah status has pushed him into the embrace of Vladimir Putin, ministers claim Belarus is giving migrants ‘strange pills’ and the heroin substitute methadone to help them survive the border crossings.

After arriving in the border area, I received a text message saying: ‘The Polish border is sealed. BLR [Belarus] authorities told you lies. Go back to Minsk! Don’t take any pills from Belarusian soldiers.’ My car was stopped several times at checkpoints in the region.

Piotr Mazuruk, a border police commander, said: ‘These migrants are like stones. The Belarusians throw them over the border to us. And we throw them back again.’ A plea from Catholic church leaders to let medical volunteers enter the emergency area was rejected by ministers last week. Activists and opposition figures argue that such decisions, and forcing people back over the border, flout international treaties – and so plays into Lukashenko’s hands.

Karolina Czerwinska, project co-ordinator for the Polish Migration Forum, told me about a refugee who was treated for a broken leg in a Polish hospital and then applied for asylum. But she said that 24 hours later, the Polish authorities had sent him back to Belarus.

I accompanied volunteers from Grupa Granica who take food, drink and clothing to groups who send details of their location in the forests to family and friends as they play cat-and-mouse with the border forces hunting them down. One volunteer told me that many people crossing from Belarus thought they could happily stroll across borders through Poland to Germany, thus arriving utterly unprepared to be stuck in a freezing forest.

She had found a Syrian family with elderly grandparents and children as young as three. ‘It was so sad. They had no idea they were in a forest hundreds of miles from the German border. They thought it would be so easy.’

Poland claims it is respecting international obligations to migrants as it tries to stem the flow of people. Under EU rules, people should apply for asylum in the first safe country they enter. But many of the migrants, hoping to head further west, do not want asylum in Poland. A former minister in the Polish government said: ‘The pushback is not 100 per cent legal but it has become common practice on many European borders such as Greece and Italy.’

He said Poland was being targeted by Belarus in revenge for its strong support of the democratic anti-Lukashenko movement in Belarus, but was powerless to stop the regime without wider diplomatic support.

Although Belarus has promised to suspend flights from Iraq that are used by migrants, the winter schedule for Minsk airport shows 55 flights a week from the Middle East, including the launch of daily flights from Damascus, the Syrian capital. Some refugees have told of being taken directly to Belarus’s borders after arriving in Minsk. But one local journalist describes the city centre as being ‘Little Baghdad’ as there are so many migrants, while a human-rights worker told me the capital’s hotels are packed with Middle Eastern visitors. Most want to go to Germany, where Angela Merkel agreed in 2015 to allow one million refugees and migrants to come and stay. Although the numbers making the journey are far smaller than six years ago, the Berlin government rapidly moved thousands of police to the Polish border to intensify checks. The police union, however, is warning of another ‘collapse’ if tougher action is not taken.

Horst Seehofer, the interior minister, backs Poland’s plan to build a border wall, but other politicians have condemned the responses that could results in people freezing to death in forests.

‘This is a disgrace for Europe,’ said Gerhart Baum, a former interior minister. ‘We have a moral obligation towards these people that we are not abiding by.’

Gaith, 20, is a Syrian who has just applied for asylum in Germany. He told me he paid $7,000 (£5,200) in Lebanon for a fake passport but it was rumbled when he tried to enter Turkey. So his smuggler flew him to Minsk to ensure that he could enter Europe.

‘I was stuck in the forest for 11 days – it was like a game of ping-pong. The Polish police send you back to Belarus, then the Belarus police send you back to Poland. It happened to me about 20 times. The Poles were friendly, giving us food and water, but the Belarusians beat people and let their dogs bite you. I was scared since the forest was cold and dark. There were so many people from all over the world – from Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Lebanon.’

Eventually, Belarusian officials took them to a spot on the border where there were no Polish frontier police, and five of his 16-strong group made it through, They were met by taxis hired by his people-traffickers and taken to Berlin.

The explosive nature of this crisis became clear two weeks ago when it emerged that more than 50 far-Right German vigilantes armed with batons, machetes, pepper sprays and a bayonet were stopped by police on anti-migrant patrols.

They had responded to a call from Third Way, a small extremist group which broke away from the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party. That group told me it was sending ‘sympathisers’ on border patrols to find illegal entrants.

Sascha Rossmueller, chairman of the party in Bavaria, said their unarmed patrols kept within laws that allow people to ‘physically hold’ anyone suspected of a crime.

‘The crucial aspect is not that we will prevent mass migration but it allows us to attract attention,’ he admitted.

There have also been protests outside centres for asylum-seekers near the border.

‘This is evil genius but we all play Lukashenko’s game,’ says Greta von der Decken, legal adviser for a refugee group working in Eisenhüttenstadt, a town by the Polish border. ‘I am sad because Lukashenko is winning.’