Dmitry Polyanskiy, the Chargé d’Affaires of the Permanent Mission of Russia to the UN, in remarks to reporters in New York yesterday, effectively demolished the European claims that the border crisis was manufactured in Minsk and Moscow. He said that the migrants travel to Belarus of their own accord—no one is pushing them, in other words—with the intention of moving on to Germany. “Instead, they are pushed back from the border, persecuted and beaten. There have been many instances when Polish and Lithuanian border guards beat migrants and push them back into Belarus.” Such behavior, he said. “is a total disgrace and a flagrant violation of all international conventions and rules.” Polyanskiy conveyed a story in Euronews reporting that Lithuania’s Interior Ministry ordered a unit of snipers to be deployed to the area to help European authorities tackle the migrant crisis. “It is not easy to comment on things like that because it looks like they are trying to hunt these people down instead of trying to negotiate a solution to this crisis,” he said.
If the crisis was manufactured, then it was manufactured in European capitals, not Minsk, Polyanskiy argued. There was a readmission agreement between the EU and Belarus until last summer, when it was scrapped by the Europeans, when the EU imposed new sanctions on Minsk which made the agreement no longer economically feasible. “These people arrived to Belarus legally and they have valid visas and hotel bookings,” Polyanskiy said. “There is no legitimate reason for Belarus to send these people back to their countries of origin. That would be a blatant violation of all international conventions. Now the EU is trying to play the blame game. They want to portray Belarus and even Russia as the perpetrators of this crisis.”
Instead of blaming Russia, the solution can be found in dialogue, said Polyanskiy. “One should be mindful of the reason why these people are fleeing their home countries, who was responsible for this crisis and what countries destroyed these people’s homeland.” (https://russiaun.ru/en/news/belpol11112021)
Instead of dialogue, however, there is a risk that the border crisis could explode into a military conflict. The Belarusian Defense Ministry accused Poland on Nov. 11 of an “unprecedented” military buildup on the border, saying that migration control did not warrant the concentration of 15,000 troops backed by tanks, air defense assets and other weapons, reported the Associated Press. “It looks more like forming a strike group of forces,” the ministry said, and reporting that the Polish military buildup prompted Belarus to respond with actions “both independently and within the existing agreements with our strategic ally,” a reference to Russia. (https://apnews.com/article/european-union-moscow-belarus-poland-russia-99656920fa8d12adee6043fac4d9b546)
