Number of flights from the Middle East to Belarus doubled

The number of migrants from the Middle East, whom the Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko deliberately brings into the country in order to immediately send them to the borders with neighboring EU countries, has skyrocketed. The regime in the former Soviet republic has significantly increased the number of flights from the Arab world to the capital Minsk, reported the newspaper “Welt am Sonntag” yesterday.

According to the latest landing plans at Minsk Airport, 40 weekly flights from Istanbul, Damascus and Dubai are planned until March 2022. These three airports are currently most frequently used by migrants for direct flights to Belarus in order to travel from there to the EU.

There are now more than twice as many flight connections from the region to Minsk than in winter 2019/20. At that time, according to the report, 17 planes from these and other airports in the Middle East landed in Minsk. This number has decreased again since the beginning of the corona pandemic.

Currently, around 800 to 1000 migrants land in Belarus every day, as the “Welt am Sonntag” reported on, citing German security groups. In addition, five more Belarusian airports will soon be able to fly to from the Middle East. They would be rededicated from national to international airports. For example, one of the airports is only around 20 kilometers from the Polish border in the city of Grodno, it said.

“The situation on the EU’s eastern border is unprecedented and caused by a completely unscrupulous, aggressive regime,” said EU Interior Commissioner Ylva Johansson yesterday. “Lukashenko is desperate, the EU is taking action against his regime and is considering further sanctions.”

The foreign policy spokeswoman for the Greens in the National Council, Ewa Ernst-Dziedzic, speaks of a “European catastrophe”. Ernst-Dziedzic, who recently visited north-east Poland, does not expect the Lukashenko regime to be interested in an early solution to the crisis: “Minsk wants to show Europe that people will be sent as long as there are sanctions.”