Putin sends NUCLEAR BOMBERS over Belarus to signal support for Lukashenko amid migrant crisis

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Vladimir Putin has sent nuclear bombers over the skies of Belarus as migrants on the Polish border try to flee towards Britain and escape alleged beatings from Alexander Lukashenko’s soldiers.

Two supersonic Tu-22M3 bombers performed ‘tasks of combat alert for air defence’ in support of the Belarus leader, the Russian defence ministry said in response to the rising tensions on the border. 

Footage has shown Belarusian soldiers firing shots to intimidate terrified women and children desperately trying to escape and head towards Britain for safety, one of the estimated 2,000 migrants said. 

Western governments accuse Belarusian strongman Lukashenko of luring the migrants, mostly from the Middle East, to his country and sending them to cross into Poland to provoke a renewed European migrant crisis in retaliation for sanctions imposed against him for his brutal crackdown of protesters.

Belarus’s former ambassador to France and Poland claims the migrants are Afghan and Iraqi war veterans trained by Lukashenko’s special forces. 

Pavel Latushka who fled to Warsaw after joining Belarus’s pro-democracy movement added that the tactics were ‘a form of Nazi-era propaganda.’ 

Speaking amid the border crisis, one unnamed male said even though the UK is no longer in the EU, Britain was the real target for half of those now trying to flee.

‘Half of these people are going to UK,’ the man said in clear English during an interview with Russian state-run news outlet RIA Novosti.

‘They are not staying in Germany, nor Poland,’ he insisted. ‘We’ve got nobody, not even one person stay in Poland.’

Meanwhile, a man who claims he was beaten by Belarusian border guards was named as Youssef Atallah, a migrant from Syria.

A portrait photograph was released of Mr Atallah showing heavy bruising around his eyes and a broken nose. Both his eyes had also haemorrhaged.

The West has accused Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenko of ‘weaponising’ migrants from Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East by enabling them to fly to his country before seeking to break into the EU. 

The unnamed man at the border told RIA Novosti the migrants were expecting the Red Cross to deliver supplies, including water and food, ‘especially for the kids.’

‘The kids need milk, the babies, and we’ve got no water to make milk for them. That’s good news about them bringing water and food,’ he said. 

Photographs later showed workers from Belarusian Red Cross distributing supplies to a crowd of migrants from a white van.

He went on to say that he understood that officials from Germany would take them across the border ‘splitting them into other countries like France, Germany, Holland,’ but said that half of the migrants at the border wanted to make it to the UK.

Speaking as tensions on the Polish-Belarus border dangerously escalate, former Belarus ambassador Latushka told EUobserver: ‘The migration crisis is being used by Lukashenko to insert into EU territory people who have [military] experience and who additionally undertook training on Belarusian territory to realise terrorist acts.

‘Next, Lukashenko will go for a local military conflict on the EU border, and in the meantime he will sell the picture to the world about a humanitarian crisis, the Europeans being to blame.’

He added that the migrant ‘veterans’ had been handpicked and flown to Belarus between July and September.

According to the former ambassador, the migrants were trained at a base near the village of Opsa, in north-west Belarus, which was carried out with the help of Belarus’s special forces from the ‘Marjina Horka’ brigade.

He added that the brigade had fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s with advisers from Russia’s ‘GRU’ military intelligence.

The news comes as Polish government spokesman Piotr Muller said: ‘We expect there could be an escalation of … an armed nature any time soon on the Polish border.’

Meanwhile Polish media has reported that weapons captured from Afghanistan were delivered to Belarus by two IL-76 military aviation planes in early November.

Former ambassador Latushka said his information came from ‘sources high-up in Belarusian intelligence services’, but added: ‘I cannot give any names or documents regarding this, as people are at the highest risk – for passing on this information they would face the death penalty.’

This week the focus has been on the border with Poland, but the EU is also concerned about landlocked Belarus frontiers with Latvia and Lithuania.

Earlier, a video showed Belarusian troops firing gunshots close to a terrified group of migrants at the Polish border, hours before the desperate refugees made fresh attempts to break through barbed wire fences and into the EU. 

Video captured by Polish guards showed people, including women and children, lined up along a border fence on the Belarusian side before the sound of a soldier cocking and firing his rifle is heard. 

Amid screams from the migrants, two more soldiers can be seen kicking and hitting them before one drops to his knee and raises his gun at them. A Polish soldier can be heard calling to his squad-mate: ‘Come, we have to step back!’

Poland released the footage to rubbish claims by Belarus that it was Polish soldiers who had fired the shots, as Minsk tries to discredit its rivals in Warsaw as part of a ‘hybrid attack’ on the EU using migrants as a weapon.

Amid a rush of migrant crossings overnight Belarus released footage of what it claimed was four Kurdish migrants beaten bloody by guards – though video seen by MailOnline appears fake and Poland has denounced it as ‘propaganda’.

In it, the four men can be seen in a campsite – one lying in a tent, another sitting by a campfire, a third crouching in a tent doorway, and a fourth squatting on the floor.

All four men are hiding their faces – possibly to conceal their identities – with injuries only visible on three of them, some of which seemed to be made with prosthetics.

The injuries are also being displayed openly to the camera, with seemingly no serious attempt having been made to bandage them.  

There are now thousands of desperate people camped out along the Polish border, with the EU saying they were lured to Belarus on false promises of passage to Europe then marched to the border and forced to make illegal crossings.

Poland said more than 250 people attempted the crossing between Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, with dozens making it. Around 50 were found and arrested near the town of Białowieża early today, with more being sought.

‘It was not a calm night. Indeed, there were many attempts to breach the Polish border,’ Polish Defence Minister Mariusz Blaszczak told broadcaster PR1.

Polish private radio RMF said around 200 people had tried to breach the border on Tuesday afternoon, and a second group of around 60 had tried after midnight.

Blaszczak said all those who tried to cross were detained, and that the force of Polish soldiers stationed at the border had been strengthened to 15,000 from 12,000.

Three EU diplomats told Reuters on late on Tuesday that the bloc was close imposing more sanctions on Belarus over the escalating crisis, targeting around 30 individuals and entities including the Belarusian foreign minister.

Germany’s acting Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Twitter on Wednesday the images from the Belarusian border were ‘horrific’.

‘Mr. Lukashenko …unscrupulously exploits people seeking refuge as hostages for his cynical power play… But the European Union cannot be blackmailed.’ he said.

Maas said the EU would not leave anyone in need alone. 

Another video released on Wednesday reportedly showed Russian Tu-22M3 nuclear bombers patrolling the skies over Belarus amid rising tension with the West.

The Russian defence ministry said the mission involving two giant supersonic strategic warplanes were ‘performing tasks of combat alert for air defence in the Unified Regional Air Defense System of the Union State (of Russia and Belarus’.

The bombers ‘performed patrols in the airspace of the Republic of Belarus. During the flight of the aircraft, the issues of interaction with ground control points of the armed forces of Russia and Belarus were worked out’.

This came as Russia lambasted the Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki for blaming Vladimir Putin for the border crisis with migrants in Belarus. 

‘We consider absolutely irresponsible and unacceptable the Polish prime minister’s words that Russia is responsible for this situation,’ said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. This is an absolutely irresponsible and unacceptable statement.’ 

Belarus is already under EU sanctions, levied after Lukashenko hijacked a Ryanair flight over the bloc’s airspace to arrest a journalist who criticised his regime.

The EU has also provided sanctuary to Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the exiled Belarusian opposition leader who is widely thought to have beaten Lukashenko in a 2020 ballot that analysts believe was rigged, and voiced support for pro-democracy protesters.

The bloc says Lukashenko is now taking revenge by manufacturing a migrant crisis on its eastern border to try and ‘destabilise’ the alliance.

European leaders say migrants are being flown to Belarus from across the Middle East, Africa and Asia and then forced to try and cross the border.

The crisis has been simmering since spring, when what-was one of the quietest migrant routes into Europe suddenly became one of its busiest, but has escalated this week with the sudden arrival of around 1,000 people at the border on Monday.

There are now thought to be around 2,000 people camped out at the border, who cannot cross into Poland and are blocked from going backwards into Belarus.

They have little food or water and are living out of tents in freezing conditions, with overnight temperatures frequently dropping below zero. 

Lukashenko, with the backing of Moscow, has denied orchestrating the migrant crossings – claiming they are legitimate asylum seekers who should be given access.

He described the EU as ‘b*****ds’ on Tuesday, while accusing Poland of ‘conducting a war’ by moving troops close to the border which he warned could lead to conflict.

‘This is either a training exercise or it’s blackmail,’ he said, before vowing: ‘We will calmly stand up to this.’

Lukashenko issued the fiery statement following a phone call with Putin, during which the pair discussed the crisis.

Belarusian state news agency Belta reported the phone call, saying the two leaders had discussed Polish troop movements at the border and were concerned.

‘A special place in the conversation was taken by the discussion of the situation on the Belarusian-Polish border, as well as the tough actions of the Polish side in relation to civilians,’ Belta said.

‘At the same time, it was emphasised, the fact of regular Polish troops gathering on the border was of particular concern. The heads of state discussed in detail the disturbing facts and trends taking place on the Belarusian-Polish borders.’

Following the call, Mr Putin convened a meeting of Russia’s security council to discuss what the Kremlin called ‘state border policy’.

Belta also said Belarus’s foreign minister Vladimir Makei was travelling to Moscow to discuss the crisis with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.  

Mr Lavrov has previously thrown his weight behind Belarus on the issue, saying the EU should be paying Lukashenko to take the migrants back.