The ruler of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko accused the European Union and the German authorities of non-fulfillment of obligations to resolve the situation with migrants on the Belarusian-Polish border. The European side refuses to interact with Minsk and does not make contact, Lukashenka said on Monday, November 22, at a meeting with the governor of the Grodno region, Vladimir Karanik.
Lukashenko claims that the “contact persons” in the EU are responding with a refusal to the requests of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Belarus Vladimir Makei to cooperate in resolving the crisis situation, citing employment. The ruler of Belarus, unrecognized by the European Union, also said that he asked the acting. German Chancellor Angela Merkel (Angela Merkel) to take to Germany about 2,000 refugees from a camp on the border with Poland. Merkel allegedly promised to address the issue at the EU level, but this is not happening, he says.
Alexander Lukashenko also threatened to block EU representatives from entering Belarus. “They have nothing to do here. Because it will be the same as with these international visitors. They will come to show off. We ourselves will deal with these people if Germany does not take them to itself. But where to go? We have nowhere to go. But we must demand from the Germans to take them, “the state agency BelTA quoted him as saying.
Poland is ready to pay for the return of migrants
Meanwhile, on the eve of the Prime Minister of Poland Mateusz Morawiecki expressed Warsaw’s readiness to pay for the return of migrants who are at the borders of his country to their homeland. “We are ready to pay for the return of migrants to their countries at any time,” he said after talks with his Estonian counterpart Kaya Kallas. According to Morawiecki, Poland is discussing this topic through diplomatic channels with the leadership of Iraq and other Middle Eastern states, but the Belarusian security forces are hindering the return of migrants at the border to their countries.
Merkel called Lukashenko twice last week, despite criticism of the move both in Germany and elsewhere in the EU. According to German government spokesman Steffen Seibert, the goal was to improve the dire humanitarian situation on the ground, but the phone calls were not an “act of legitimation” for Lukashenka.
The EU also sent 700 thousand euros as humanitarian aid to migrants in Belarus and stated that it is ready to increase this amount if humanitarian organizations are allowed to access the victims.
Hybrid attack on the European Union
An increased flow of migrants from the Middle East to the EU countries has been observed since May 2021. The most difficult situation is in Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Migrants are trying to get to the territory of these countries through Belarus. European leaders accuse Lukashenko of a hybrid attack on the European Union in retaliation for the sanctions imposed on Minsk.
Lukashenka admitted that Belarusians helped migrants to get to the EU. “I said that I was not going to keep migrants by force at the border or take them away by force … I will not stop them, because they are not going to my country, but to yours,” he stressed in an interview with the British media company BBC on November 19. The most difficult situation in November developed on the Polish-Belarusian border. On November 8, several thousand migrants approached the border with Poland from Belarus. Since then, they have made numerous attempts to cross the border.
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