(CN) — They are ugly and dangerous scenes: Several thousand refugees and asylum seekers from war-torn countries are caught in the middle of a political and military standoff along the heavily guarded border separating Belarus and Poland, the edge of the European Union.
Since Monday, tensions between Belarus and the EU have escalated rapidly after Belarusian border agents pushed scores of refugees toward the heavily fortified Polish border, where they have been met by Polish police and soldiers, razor-wire fences, pepper spray and tear gas.
Refugees seeking entry into the EU attacked the fences on Monday with wire clippers, shovels and even felled trees at one section in a desperate effort to break through. Phalanxes of Polish border agents pushed them back, sometimes violently.
Belarus, with the help of Russia, is accused of luring refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria to Minsk and then pushing them toward the borders of Poland, Lithuania and Latvia in retaliation for the EU's support for efforts to bring down the authoritarian regime of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a Soviet-style strongman who's ruled over his country since 1994 in brutal dictatorial fashion.
The EU is helping the Belarusian opposition, which has been crushed by Lukashenko since massive protests broke out against the allegedly rigged August 2020 presidential elections that gave the longtime president an improbably high margin of victory.
For their part, Minsk and the Kremlin are calling Poland and the EU hypocritical for refusing to take in the refugees, arguing that the West is responsible for destabilizing Iraq, Syria and Libya and causing so many to flee their homelands. Authorities say there are up to 4,000 asylum seekers along the border and that several more thousand may be on their way.
“The responsibility for the resolution of the migration crisis at the Polish-Belarusian border lies with the West,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on social media. “It caused it by its actions in the Middle East. And it must be fully resolved in compliance with international humanitarian law.”
The EU's rhetoric meanwhile is becoming more sharp with a Brussels spokesman calling Belarus a “gangster” state this week. In response to the border crisis, the EU is preparing to impose even more sanctions on Minsk and “blacklisting” airline companies accused of transporting asylum seekers to Minsk, what the EU is calling a system of “human trafficking.” Even NATO has said it is ready to help Poland defend its border.
Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, denounced Belarus for “putting people's lives at risk.”
“The instrumentalization of migrants for political purposes by Belarus is unacceptable,” she said, adding the EU would not change its position on Belarus due to this new pressure.
She said sending refugees to the Polish border was a “hybrid attack” against the EU. Western analysts see Russia, and by extension Belarus, engaged in what some call a “hybrid war” against the West, deploying a mixture of propaganda and disinformation, hacking attacks, assassinations, military confrontation and other forms of aggression such as this alleged scheme to use refugees as pawns.
On Tuesday during an emergency session of parliament, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki used the border crisis to accuse Russian President Vladimir Putin of seeking to “rebuild the Russian empire.” Poland has a long history of suffering at the hands of Russian and Soviet rulers.
“This is the latest attack of Lukashenko, who is an executor, but has an enabler, and this enabler is in Moscow, this enabler is President Putin, which shows a determination to carry out the scenario of rebuilding the Russian empire, the scenario that we, all Poles, have to forcefully oppose,” he said.
