POLAND-BELARUS BORDER, Poland (AP) — A Somali woman pushes her bandaged hand between two vertical beams of a thick metal barrier separating Belarus from Poland as she and four other women stare at the European Union.
They nod gratefully as a Polish humanitarian aid worker calls to them across a stretch of land as wide as a one-lane road and promises to help. Polish soldiers patrol the area.
The green stretch of Bialowieza Forest that spans the border is one of the flashpoints in a months-long standoff between Belarus and its main backer and ally Russia, and the 27-member European bloc, which has seen a sharp increase in migrant flows towards the border before the EU has seen. The parliamentary elections start on Thursday.
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE BORDER?
The number of attempted illegal border crossings from Belarus into EU member state Poland has risen to almost 400 a day in recent months – from just a handful a day earlier this year, Polish officials say.
Polish border guards have also condemned the increasingly aggressive behavior of some migrants on the Belarusian side of the border. They posted videos online showing some throwing stones, logs and even wood at Polish troops from behind the fence.
There have been cases of soldiers and guards being hospitalized and some requiring stitches afterwards being stabbed or cut by knife-wielding attackers. Last Tuesday, officials near the village of Dubicze Cerkiewne said a migrant reached between the bars of the five-meter-high barrier and stabbed a soldier in the ribs.
In recent years, EU authorities have accused authoritarianism Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on weaponizing migration by luring people to his country to find an easier entry point into the bloc than the more dangerous routes across the Mediterranean.
Yet migrants have died, some buried in Muslim and Christian cemeteries in Poland.
WHAT DOES POLAND SAY?
Poland sees the new push at the border as an orchestrated attempt by Russia and Belarus to stoke anti-migrant sentiment, which could in turn boost far-right parties in the European elections.
Poland and the EU say migrants – who have flocked to former Soviet countries from as far away as the Middle East and Africa – have become pawns in an attempt by Russia and Belarus to destabilize Europe, which supported Ukraine in its defense against the Russian invasion more than two years ago.
The $405 million (374 million euros) metal barrier. was built in 2022 under Poland’s previous conservative government along a 180-kilometer border, as part of efforts to curb the large influx of migrants that many in the EU want to push back.
The barrier has been a winning point for anti-immigrant parties that often support Russia or are supported by Russia.
Now the government of Poland is coming in Prime Minister Donald Tuskwho took over in December and promised a new pro-EU government after eight years of stormy conservative rule, has done just that promised to tighten security measures and says it must protect the EU border.
“We are not dealing with (just) asylum seekers here, we are dealing with a coordinated, highly efficient – on many levels – operation to breach the Polish border and attempts to destabilize the country,” Tusk said during a meeting last week visit to border troops. .
WHAT IS THE POLITICAL END GAME?
According to Poland, Moscow’s scenario, which reportedly wants to flood the EU with a wave of migrants, would provide political ammunition for anti-migrant far-right parties in countries such as France, Germany and Italy.
Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski claimed Monday at a meeting in Bialystok, eastern Poland, that many of the migrants trying to breach the Polish border are “people with Russian visas” – meaning they were at one point allowed to enter Russia enter before going to Poland. to Belarus and to the West.
“They were at least encouraged and perhaps even recruited into this operation, so we know who is behind this operation,” he said. “This is intended to have a political effect – to strengthen the far right, which promises to destroy the European Union from within.”
The Ministry of the Interior in neighboring Germany, the main destination for many migrants, has reported an increasing trend in unauthorized migration involving Russia and Belarus. It attributes the increase in part to Russian security officials’ intensified crackdown on unauthorized migrants after a deadly terrorist attack on a concert hall in Moscow in March.
Critics have accused President Vladimir Putin’s Russia in recent years of a range of crimes against the West, including election interference, disinformation and fake news campaign s, computer hacking, and alleged poisoning abroad from enemies of the Kremlin head – all accusations that Moscow has denied.
Sviatlana Tsikhnaouskaya, the Belarusian opposition leader living in exile, told The Associated Press that Lukashenko’s government is “trying to blackmail and scare the EU with waves of uncontrollable migrants.”
“This aligns the interests of Lukashenko and Putin,” she said.
What about the migrants?
In the middle are the migrants themselves, including many women and children trapped in hostile swamps and forests along the border. In late May, volunteers were seen on the Polish side of the border giving water to an exhausted Algerian man.
Staff activists have criticized Tusk’s government for a strict border policy. He has acknowledged that many soldiers feel conflicted between the need to protect the border and sympathy for humanitarians who want to “help others in need.”
Migrants who do get through can apply for international protection within the EU. This is granted in exceptional cases. Some are also deported to their home countries.
Olga Cielemencka, an activist with the Podlaskie Volunteer Humanitarian Emergency Service, who pledged to help the Somali woman with the bandaged hand, said her group is trying to provide advice and assistance to the migrants.
“But our ability to act is very limited,” she said. “There’s not much we can do.”
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Associated Press writers Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin, Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, and Monika Scislowska in Warsaw, Poland, contributed to this report.
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