The German authorities are investigating the involvement of the President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko in the transportation of illegal migrants to Germany, the newspaper Bild reports, citing sources.
The German authorities believe that Belarus is organizing the transportation of illegal migrants to EU countries in order to “blackmail Europe in order to lift sanctions” from Minsk, the newspaper writes. Since August, almost four thousand people have illegally crossed the German border through Belarus and Poland. Moreover, in the first week of October alone, 1,183 foreigners illegally arrived in Germany. These are mainly citizens of Syria and Iraq, the newspaper claims.
Migrants fly to Belarus by air from the airports of Baghdad and Erbil, Dubai, Beirut, Amman and Istanbul. From mid-September, foreigners receive a Belarusian student visa for this. Already in Minsk, border guards or police deliver migrants to the border with Poland, writes Bild. According to the newspaper, illegal crossing of the EU borders costs 4,000 euros for migrants, and the Belarusian side receives money for this.
Since June of this year, the flow of illegal migrants from Belarus, crossing the border of the country and the European Union, has increased – first to Lithuania, and then to Latvia, Poland and Estonia. On September 2, Poland introduced a state of emergency for a month in two regions bordering on Belarus. The press service of the President of the country explained that the emergency situation in these regions was introduced “in connection with a special threat to the safety of citizens and public order associated with the current situation on the state border with the Republic of Belarus.”
The authorities of the eastern members of the EU accused Minsk of organizing the transit of illegal immigrants from countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan by airplanes of the Belarusian airline Belavia against the background of a serious deterioration in political relations and sanctions pressure from Brussels. On September 15, the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen spoke about this in her annual address to the European Parliament. Lukashenko accused the border authorities of Poland and Lithuania of forcibly expelling migrants and said that he had relinquished responsibility for stopping their influx into the EU because of the sanctions.
Commenting on the situation with the influx of migrants, the President of Belarus stated that because of the EU sanctions, the country has “neither money nor strength” to restrain this flow.
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