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POLAND-BELARUS BORDER, Poland (AP) — A Somali woman presses her bandaged hand between two vertical bars of the thick metal barrier that separates Belarus from Poland and looks with four other women toward the European Union.
A Polish humanitarian worker called out to them from across a patch of land the width of a single lane road, promising them help, and they nodded gratefully. Polish soldiers patrolled nearby.
The lush stretch of Białowieża Forest that straddles the border has been one of the flashpoints in a months-long standoff between Belarus and its main backer and ally Russia and the 27-nation European Union, which has seen a surge in the influx of migrants heading to the border ahead of European elections that begin on Thursday.
What happened at the border?
According to Polish authorities, the number of illegal border crossing attempts from Belarus to EU member Poland has soared in recent months from just a few a day at the start of the year to nearly 400 a day.
Polish border guards have also accused migrants of increasingly aggressive behaviour on the Belarusian side of the border, posting online videos of migrants hurling stones, logs and even burning wood at Polish troops from behind a fence.
Soldiers and guards have been stabbed and slashed by knife-wielding assailants, some of whom have been hospitalized and required stitches. Last Tuesday, near the village of Dubicze Cherkievne, authorities said a migrant stabbed a soldier in the ribs through the bars of a fence more than 5 meters (16 feet) high.
Over the past few years, EU officials have accused Belarus’s autocratic President Alexander Lukashenko of weaponizing migration, luring people to his country in search of an easier route into the country than the dangerous route through the Mediterranean.
But the migrants are still dying, some of them buried in Muslim and Christian cemeteries in Poland.
What does Poland say?
Poland sees the new border movements as a coordinated attempt by Russia and Belarus to stoke anti-immigrant sentiment and ultimately boost support for far-right parties in European votes.
Poland and the EU say the migrants, who have traveled to former Soviet countries from as far away as the Middle East and Africa, are pawns in a Russian and Belarusian plot to destabilize Europe, which helped Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression more than two years ago.
The $405 million (374 million euros) metal wall was erected along the 180-kilometer (110-mile) border under Poland’s previous conservative government in 2022 as part of efforts to curb a mass migration influx that many EU countries want to curtail.
The barrier has become a victory point for anti-immigration parties that often support or receive support from Russia.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who took over in December last year promising to form a pro-EU government after eight years of turbulent conservative rule, has now vowed to step up security measures and says the country’s border with the EU must be protected.
“We are not dealing with asylum seekers here, but with a coordinated and highly efficient operation at all levels trying to penetrate Poland’s borders and destabilise the country,” Tusk said during a visit to border guards last week.
What will the political end game be?
According to Poland, Moscow’s scenario of allowing a large influx of migrants into the EU would give political ammunition to far-right anti-immigration parties in countries such as France, Germany and Italy.
Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski argued at a meeting in the eastern Polish city of Bialystok on Monday that many of the migrants trying to cross Poland’s border are “people with Russian visas,” meaning they had been allowed into Russia at some point before heading to Belarus or the West.
“They were at least encouraged and possibly recruited for this operation, so we know who is behind it,” he said. “This is for political effect, to strengthen the far-right forces who vow to destroy the European Union from within.”
The interior ministry of neighboring Germany, the main destination for many migrants, has said there has been a rise in illegal migration linked to Russia and Belarus, partly due to Russian security forces stepping up efforts to tackle illegal immigration following the deadly March terrorist attack at a Moscow concert hall.
Critics have accused President Vladimir Putin’s Russia of engaging in all sorts of wrongdoing against the West in recent years, including election interference, disinformation and fake news campaigns, computer hacking and the alleged poisoning of opponents of the Kremlin leader abroad – all allegations that Moscow denies.
Sviatlana Tsiknauskaya, a Belarusian opposition leader living in exile, told The Associated Press that Lukashenko’s government was “trying to blackmail and terrorize the EU with an uncontrollable migration wave.”
“In this respect, the interests of Mr Lukashenko and Mr Putin coincide,” she said.
What about immigration?
Caught in the middle are the migrants themselves, including many women and children trapped in the harsh swamps and forests along the border. On the Polish side of the border in late May, volunteers were seen giving water to an exhausted Algerian man.
Aid workers have criticised Tusk’s government’s hard border policies, with Mr Tusk acknowledging that many soldiers are torn between the need to secure the border and sympathy for humanitarian workers “who want to help people in distress”.
Migrants who are allowed through can apply for international protection within the EU and are granted it in exceptional cases, although some are deported to their home countries.
Olga Tsilemka, an activist with the Podrasie Humanitarian Emergency Volunteer Service, who pledged to help the bandaged Somali woman, said her organization was trying to offer advice and support to the migrants.
“But our mobility is very limited,” she said. “There’s not much we can do.”
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Associated Press writers Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin, Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia and Monika Sisowska in Warsaw, Poland contributed to this report.
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Follow AP’s global migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration
Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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