Against the background of the aggravation of the migration crisis on the eastern border of the European Union in Brussels on Tuesday, November 9, they announced the preparation of new sanctions against Minsk. On the border of Poland and Belarus, thousands of migrants continue to try to break into the EU. Meanwhile, in Germany, where refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries are striving, the discussion on the topic “Who is to blame and what to do” is gaining momentum.
The current crisis is not comparable in scale to the events of 2015, when Germany accepted hundreds of thousands of migrants, although the footage of the convoys, consisting mainly of young men, walking towards the border is similar. Berlin is now in a weaker position – the old government of Chancellor Angela Merkel is preparing to leave, and the new one has not yet been created. In addition, the main attention of the authorities is riveted to the next wave of the coronavirus epidemic.
German politicians on Putin’s help to Lukashenko
In the statements of politicians and media publications, Russia is increasingly mentioned as the main ally of the Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko. The current aggravation is taking place against the background of the signing of agreements on the further integration of the Russian Federation and Belarus within the framework of the union state. “The ruler in Minsk is playing a cynical game with the help of Russia,” Bundestag member Friedrich Merz, who is considered one of the leading contenders for the head of Merkel’s party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), told the dpa agency on November 9 in an interview with dpa. Merz believes that “refugees seem to be deliberately taken to the Polish border and encouraged to cross illegally.”
Migrants en route from Hungary to Austria, September 2015
Federal Minister of the Interior Horst Seehofer, a member of the sister party Christian Social Union (CSU), spoke in a similar way. In an interview with the Bild newspaper published on November 9, he said: “We must help the Polish government to establish order on the external border. This is actually the European Commission’s business, and I urge it to take action. All EU countries must unite as Lukashenka, with the support of the president Vladimir Putin’s Russia is using human destinies to destabilize the West. “
MEP from the “greens” replied to the Russian Foreign Ministry
On the same day, a message came from Moscow and Minsk that Putin and Lukashenko had discussed the situation with migrants at the border by telephone. Details are not provided. Moscow has so far behaved with restraint, except for the statements of the Russian Foreign Ministry, whose representative Maria Zakharova blamed the West, including Poland itself, for the events on the Belarusian-Polish border. She recalled the participation of Warsaw in the operation of the United States and its allies in Iraq and invited Poland to let the “grateful Iraqis” enter its territory.
Member of the European Parliament and a prominent politician of the German “greens” Reinhard Bütikofer reacted to Zakharova’s words on Twitter: “The Russian Foreign Ministry says unequivocally: the Russian Federation fully supports the hybrid aggression against Poland.” The fact that “Lukashenka’s strategy is supported by Moscow and can be used by Russia itself” was previously stated by the Bundestag deputy from the Free Democratic Party (FDP) Renata Alt.
The migration crisis will be discussed in the Bundestag
One-party member of Bütikofer, former Bundestag deputy from the “greens” Marie-Louise Beck, in an interview with the WDR television and radio company spoke out even more harshly: “The problem is that Poland is in a highly explosive situation. his laws, including his policy on receiving refugees, and it is at this point that Lukashenka is hitting now, behind whose back is the Kremlin. The goal is to blow up Poland. ” Beck suggested that the goal may be to “get Poland out of the EU and thereby undermine the unity of the European Union. We know that Russian money participated in the Brexit campaign to knock Britain out of the EU.”
New Bundestag, October 2021
How to behave further with Belarus? The CDU / CSU faction in the Bundestag calls on the German government to seek EU-level sanctions against airlines that “transport migrants.” This is a quote from a document scheduled to be discussed in the Bundestag on Thursday 11 November. There, according to the dpa agency, it is proposed to take into account the dependence of Belarus on Russia, including in the issue of “state-organized smuggling of migrants.”
The key to solving the problem lies in the Kremlin?
In the German media, the idea is heard that the key to solving the problem lies in Moscow. “Putin is watching what is happening in Belarus, and he is satisfied with it,” said Christoph Wanner, a Moscow correspondent for the Welt news channel. “I think the only way out of this crisis can be found in Moscow, the key to solving the problem lies in Kremlin. I believe that the European Union should strive for a dialogue with Putin, since no one but him can restrain Lukashenka. “
“The first addressee of some kind of retaliatory measures (sanctions) should be Belarus, but not necessarily Russia,” said former German Ambassador to Russia Ernst-Jörg von Studnitz in an interview with DW. Belarus and, possibly, Putin have a certain interest in weakening, if not destabilizing the EU. But without clear evidence of Russia’s involvement in this story, the EU would play into Putin’s hands by taking some steps against Moscow. ” The former diplomat believes that attempts to publicly threaten Russia with sanctions “will lead nowhere.” He considers negotiations with Moscow in a confidential atmosphere more promising.
How the outgoing government will behave in Berlin is an open question. The European Commission said that the issue of sanctions against Russia due to the migration crisis is not being considered.
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