By Alan Charlish and Robin Emmott
SUPRASL, Poland (Reuters) – Immigrants stranded in Belarus have made several attempts to force entry into Poland at dawn, the Polish government said on Wednesday, announcing it has tightened the country’s borders as the European Union prepares to impose sanctions on Belarus because of the crisis.
The bloc’s 27 ambassadors are expected to declare on Wednesday that the growing number of migrants heading to Belarus to reach the EU border amounts to a “hybrid war” by President Alexander Lukashenko, which creates a legal basis for new sanctions.
“Mr Lukashenko…unscrupulously exploits people seeking refuge as hostages to his cynical quest for power,” tweeted Germany’s interim foreign minister, Heiko Maas.
He described as “awful” the images of the Belarusian border, where people are trapped in freezing temperatures with little food and shelter, but said the EU cannot be blackmailed.
The EU accuses Belarus of encouraging migrants from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa to try to cross the border illegally in revenge against sanctions imposed on the Minsk government for human rights abuses.
Lukashenko denies using immigrants as weapons, and on Wednesday he got another show of support from his most powerful ally Russia, which blames the EU for the crisis and sent two strategic bombers to patrol Belarusian airspace.
(By Alan Charlish in Suprasl, Poland, Andrius Sytas in Kapciamiestis, Lithuania, Joanna Plucinska, Anna Koper, Pawel Florkiewicz in Warsaw, Robin Emmott in Brussels, Kirsti Knolle in Berlin, Dmitry Antonov and Maria Kiselyova in Moscow and Matthias Williams in Kiev)
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