The months-long migrant crisis that has played out along Poland’s border with Belarus is rapidly deepening as more people make desperate attempts to cross the frontier.
Warsaw and its allies are ramping up efforts to prevent people from entering the European Union member state as a war of words with Minsk intensifies.
Thousands of migrants and refugees were stranded along the frontier in freezing conditions on Thursday, with concerns growing over their wellbeing following a spate of deaths and reports of food and water shortages.
Poland and other EU member states accuse Belarus of encouraging migrants and refugees to try to cross the shared border in revenge for Western sanctions imposed on Minsk after the disputed August 2020 election that handed longtime President Alexander Lukashenko a sixth term.
Minsk denies those charges – but has previously implied its complicity – and has turned to ally and creditor Russia for support in recent days.
Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF) has said that they are “very concerned” about people stranded on the border and in the “dense neighbouring forest”.
“People told an MSF team that they were beaten with the butt of guns, kicked, electric shocked in the neck and stripped of their belongings which were stolen or destroyed by Polish and Lithuanian border guards,” MSF said on Twitter.
“There is a humanitarian crisis before our eyes: the extremely cold temperatures are added to the stories of the violence we are hearing.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has told Russian President Vladimir Putin that Belarus was deploying defenceless people in a “hybrid attack”.
“The Chancellor stressed that the situation was caused by the Belarusian regime, which was using defenceless people in a hybrid attack on the European Union,” spokesperson Steffen Seibert said in a statement.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has told the EU to start talking to Belarus.
In his second phone call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in as many days, Putin “spoke in favour of restoring contacts between EU states and Belarus in order to resolve this problem,” the Kremlin said in a statement.
The Kremlin said the two discussed the situation and agreed on “the importance of a rapid resolution” of the crisis “in accordance with international humanitarian standards”.Migrants and refugees attempting to cross into Poland are being greeted with brusque warnings, sent via text message, that the border with Belarus is closed.
“The Polish border is sealed. BLR authorities told you lies. Go back to Minsk!” the SMS reads, referring to Belarus.As foreigners approach Poland’s border with Belarus, they automatically – as this reporter did – receive a simple and clear text message on their phones.
“The Polish border is sealed. BLR authorities told you lies. Go back to Minsk!” the SMS reads, referring to Belarus.The text also includes a warning not to take any “pills” from Belarusian soldiers; there have been unverified reports that Belarusian border guards have given people tablets containing methadone in order to “survive” the dangerous crossing to the other side.
The message has been sent to the thousands of refugees and migrants who have tried to breach the frontier and enter Poland from Belarus in recent weeks, people that rights groups say are being used as tools in a months-long dispute between the West and Russia-allied Minsk.
The crisis deepened this week as hundreds more headed to the border in scenes some observers say are akin to those from the early stages of the 2015 European refugee crisis.Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has denied that state-controlled airline Aeroflot has had any involvement in transporting migrants and refugees to Belarus.
Lavrov’s statement on Thursday was reinforced by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov who claimed, “Russia has nothing to do with the situation.”
Moscow, a longtime ally of Lukashenko, sent two nuclear-strategic bomber planes to overfly Belarus for the second day in a row on Thursday amid the crisis.