Belarus threatens to respond to any European sanction

Belarus on Thursday threatened to respond to possible European sanctions related to the crisis on its border with Poland, where a few thousand migrants are blocked in difficult conditions.

As a sign of the growing concern of the international community, the United Nations Security Council must meet urgently on Thursday to examine the situation between those two Eastern European countries.

The concern is crystallized in the fate of more than 2,000 people who are in a makeshift camp on the Belarusian side of the demarcation, where they fight against the cold by burning wood to withstand temperatures close to 0ºC.

Brussels, which fears a wave of migration similar to that of 2015, accuses Alexander Lukashenko’s regime of having orchestrated this influx to take revenge on Western sanctions, and announced new punitive measures next week.

For his part, on Thursday Lukashenko threatened the European Union to “respond” to any new sanction.

According to a statement from the Belarusian presidency, he mentioned in particular the possibility of suspending the operation of the Yamal-Europe gas pipeline, which runs through Belarus and delivers Russian gas, a vital fuel for Europeans in the midst of an energy crisis.

Shortly before, his Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei called on the EU for dialogue, stating that Minsk was in favor of a solution to this crisis “as soon as possible”.

A different war

Faced with a growing influx of migrants on its border, particularly Kurds from the Middle East, Poland deployed 15,000 military personnel, erected a fence with barbed wire and approved the construction of a wall.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who on Wednesday accused the Lukashenko regime of “state terrorism”, estimated on Thursday that his country was the subject of a “different war.” This time, “the ammunition (used) is civil,” he declared in a statement published on the occasion of the national holiday of Polish Independence.

Poland’s border guards reported 468 new crossing attempts on Thursday, which occurred the night before. The Polish Deputy Minister of the Interior, Bartosz Grodecki, specified that a group of “150 people” had tried to “force the border.”

Since August, Poland has registered a total of more than 32,000 illegal entry attempts into its territory, of which 17,300 in October.

According to the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza, 10 people have died in the border area since the beginning of the crisis.

Brussels accuses the government of Belarus of luring candidates into exile by offering them visas and chartering flights, then transporting them to the Polish border.

Warsaw further claims that Belarusian security forces resort to intimidation to force migrants to enter Polish territory, in particular by shooting into the air.

In return, Minsk maintains that Polish border guards violate international norms by blocking migrants and rejecting them with violence.

Faced with this impasse, the EU and Germany on Wednesday asked Russia, Minsk’s main supporter, to intervene.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to “use his influence” before Lukashenko to put an end to what he called the “inhumane” instrumentalization of migrants.

On Thursday Paris considered that Russia was “part of the solution, since the dependence of Belarus on Moscow is increasingly strong”, especially in the economic and politico-military level.

Moscow, which Warsaw considers the real instigator of this crisis, is limited for the moment to provide its support to Minsk, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday denounced an “anti-Belarusian campaign”.

Pending any progress on the crisis, the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced on Wednesday “an extension of sanctions” against Belarus early next week. (I)