POLAND-BELARUS BORDER, Poland (AP) — A Somali woman pushes her bandaged hand between two vertical bars of a thick metal barrier separating Belarus from Poland as she and four other women look toward the European Union.
They nod gratefully as a Polish aid worker calls them across a stretch of land as wide as a one-way road and promises to help. Polish soldiers patrol nearby.
The verdant area of the Bialowieza Forest that straddles the border is among 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 surge in migration flows. heading towards the border ahead of EU parliamentary elections which begin on Thursday.
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE BORDER?
The number of attempts to illegally cross the border from Belarus into EU member Poland has soared in recent months to almost 400 a day – up from just a handful at the start of this year, Polish authorities say.
Polish border guards also reported increasingly aggressive behavior by some migrants on the Belarusian side of the border. They posted videos online of some throwing stones, logs and even burning wood at Polish troops from behind the fence.
There were cases of soldiers and guards being hospitalized and some requiring stitches after being stabbed or cut by knife-wielding attackers. Last Tuesday, near the village of Dubicze Cerkiewne, authorities said a migrant climbed through the bars of the more than 5-meter (16-foot) high barrier and stabbed a soldier in the ribs.
In recent years, EU officials have accused authoritarian authorities Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of arming migration attracting people to their country to find an easier entry point into the bloc than the more dangerous routes across the Mediterranean Sea.
Still, migrants died, some of them buried in Muslim and Christian cemeteries in Poland.
WHAT DOES POLAND SAY?
Poland sees the new border pressure as an orchestrated attempt by Russia and Belarus to stoke anti-immigration sentiment, which could in turn boost far-right parties in the European vote.
Poland and the EU say migrants – who traveled to former Soviet Union countries from as far away as the Middle East and Africa – have become pawns in the an effort by Russia and Belarus to destabilize Europe, which supported Ukraine in its defense against Russia’s invasion more than two years ago.
O Metal barrier worth US$405 million (374 million euros) was erected along a 180-kilometer (110-mile) stretch of border under Poland’s previous conservative government in 2022, part of efforts to stem large migrant flows that many in the EU want to reduce.
The barrier has been a victory point for anti-immigrant parties that often support or are supported by Russia.
Now the Polish Entrist government Prime Minister Donald Tuskwho took office in December promising a new pro-EU administration after eight years of stormy Conservative rule, promised to intensify security measures and says it must protect the EU border.
“We are not dealing with (just) any asylum seekers here, we are dealing with a coordinated and very efficient operation – on many levels – to breach the Polish border and try to destabilize the country,” Tusk said last week while visiting border troops . .
WHAT IS THE POLITICAL ENDING?
According to Poland, Moscow’s scenario of allegedly trying to flood the EU with a surge of migrants would provide political ammunition for anti-migrant and far-right parties in countries such as France, Germany and Italy.
Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski claimed at a meeting in Bialystok, eastern Poland, on Monday that many of the migrants trying to cross the Polish border “are people with Russian visas” – meaning that at some point were allowed to enter Russia before they left. for Belarus and 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 Interior Ministry of neighboring Germany, the main destination for many migrants, cited a growing trend of unauthorized migration linked to Russia and Belarus. He attributed the increase, in part, to the intensification of measures taken by Russian security authorities against unauthorized migrants, following a deadly terrorist attack on a Moscow concert hall in March.
Critics have accused President Vladimir Putin’s Russia of all manner of wrongdoing against the West in recent years, including election interference, disinformation and fake news campaign s, computer hacking and alleged poisoning abroad of enemies of the Kremlin chief – all allegations that Moscow has denied.
Sviatlana Tsikhnaouskaya, a Belarusian opposition leader who lives in exile, told the Associated Press that Lukashenko’s government is trying to “blackmail the EU and scare it with uncontrollable waves of migrants.”
“In this, the interests of Lukashenko and Putin align,” she said.
WHAT ABOUT MIGRANTS?
Caught in the middle are the migrants themselves, including many women and children trapped in hostile swamps and forests along the border. At the end of May, on the Polish side of the border, volunteers were seen giving water to an exhausted Algerian man.
Help Activists criticized Tusk’s government for tough border policies. He acknowledged that many soldiers feel conflicted between the need to protect the border and sympathy for aid workers who want to “help other people in danger.”
Migrants who manage to pass through can apply for international protection within the EU, which is granted in exceptional cases. Some are also deported to their home countries.
Olga Cielemencka, an activist with the Podlaskie Voluntary Humanitarian Emergency Service who promised to help the Somali woman with her bandaged hand, said her group is trying to offer advice and assistance to migrants.
“But our abilities to act are 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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