They scared the migrants by firing shots in their presence, the Polish Ministry of Defense tweeted on Wednesday. Police in Poland arrested more than 50 migrants near the border with Belarus. According to government spokesman Piotr Müller, Poland is considering completely closing the border with Belarus.
This will be considered as an option in more far-reaching scenarios, he said on Wednesday in an interview with the “Wirtualna Polska” portal. The Belarusian authorities had been informed that such a possibility would exist if they did not cease their activities. Local police spokesman Tomasz Krupa said on Wednesday that the people broke the border in two groups and entered Poland illegally. The arrests were made in the past 24 hours near the village of Bialowieza. Several refugees have evaded arrest and are now being searched for. According to the Polish Ministry of Defense, there are 15,000 soldiers at the border.
The EU accuses Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko of deliberately smuggling migrants from the Middle East into the EU states of Latvia, Lithuania and Poland in order to retaliate against the sanctions adopted by Brussels. Interior Minister Karl Nehammer (ÖVP) phoned his Polish counterpart Mariusz Kaminski on Wednesday on the sidelines of a visit to Israel. He supported Kaminski’s call for further sanctions against the Belarusian regime and financial aid from the EU for the construction of a border fence, Nehammer told the APA. “Refusing any financial support for a border fence” and “only helping” with the admission of irregular migrants is a “completely wrong signal that is being sent here to smuggling organizations that profit from illegal migration.” Don’t let Lukashenko blackmail the EU, said Nehammer. “We have to give a clear answer.”
In a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel underlined that “the instrumentalization of migrants against the European Union by the Belarusian regime is inhuman and completely unacceptable,” said German government spokesman Steffen Seibert on Wednesday. She asked Putin “to influence the regime in Minsk”. Meanwhile, Ukraine increased its troops on the border with Belarus. The Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte visited the border area with Belarus. In Lithuania, the state of emergency has been in effect for a month since midnight along the border strip and five kilometers inland. The human rights organization Amnesty International called for help for the migrants stranded on the Polish EU external border. Doctors Without Borders also called for support for the migrants.
“The refugee crisis was provoked by the EU itself and its states bordering Belarus,” said Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei during a visit to Moscow on Wednesday. Belarus hopes for “mutual support” from and by Russia, “including a common response to unfriendly actions against our country”. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Minsk and Moscow have “effectively strengthened their cooperation to counter a campaign against Belarus initiated by Washington and its European allies in international organizations”.
According to Polish estimates, a total of up to 12,000 migrants are currently in Belarus. The EU accuses Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko of deliberately smuggling migrants from the Middle East into the EU states of Latvia, Lithuania and Poland in order to retaliate against the sanctions adopted by Brussels. Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki accused Russia of being behind the refugee dispute between Belarus and the EU. The governments of the EU states partially suspended an agreement with Belarus to facilitate the issuing of visas. This affects the Belarusian authorities, but not ordinary citizens. The EU Commission said that additional sanctions were being prepared against the country. In addition, it is checking, according to its own information, whether there are more flights from African countries, Russia, India and Iran to Belarus and who is being transported with the machines.
Source From: Nachrichten
