At an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on the refugee crisis on the border between Belarus and the EU, the USA and the European members of the body condemned the “orchestrated instrumentalization of people” by Minsk. The aim of the ruler Alexander Lukashenko’s action is to «destabilize the external border of the European Union», it said in a joint statement after the closed session on Thursday in New York.
The statement, which Norway and the United Kingdom also followed, said Belarus’s aim is also to “destabilize neighboring countries” and “divert attention from its own growing human rights violations”.
The emergency meeting called by Estonia, France and Ireland lasted a little over half an hour. The statement made no mention of Russia, which has supported Belarus since the beginning of the crisis. Before the meeting, the Russian ambassador to the UN, Dmitri Polyansky, had denied allegations made by the West and assured that Moscow was not involved in sending migrants to the border with Poland.
The EU accuses Lukashenko of deliberately smuggling migrants to the borders of the EU countries Latvia, Lithuania and Poland in retaliation for sanctions. In the Belarusian-Polish border area, thousands of people, especially from the Middle East, are currently stuck in freezing temperatures. (afp)