Six billion euros. The whole story of the migrant crisis between Belarus and Poland revolves around this figure. And, some argue, perhaps also around a clever Warsaw strategy. Let’s start with the money. Those six billion are the monstrous figure that in recent years the European Union has paid to Turkey to put the cap on the route of migrants arriving from Middle East, especially from Syria after the civil war. The wave of 2015-2016, following the famous summer of welcoming Angela Merkel, left its mark and, in that case, Erdogan he used it to get two hefty checks turned over to block the almost uninterrupted flow of migrants from that part of the world.
Now, a few years later, he plans to do the same too Aleksandr Lukashenko. That the calculation is this seems to emerge explicitly from the statements of the Russian Foreign Minister Sergej Lavrov. The diplomat of Minsk’s great neighbor has in fact issued a statement in which he directly calls on Brussels to reward and encourage Belarus’s border control efforts by providing economic compensation. The problem is that, despite recent frictions and tensions (read the entries “chair“and” Ursula von der Leyen “) Erdogan has never become completely unusable by the Old Continent. Ankara is part of the Born, is an important economic and geopolitical player in too many theaters directly linked to Europe, from the Middle East to the Mediterranean. It is impossible to completely sever ties with the “sultan”. Reversing the Mario Draghi during the G20 in Rome after the furious controversies of recent months.
Migrant crisis between Belarus and Poland: what’s behind it
Lukashenko, on the other hand, has an image that is too compromised to be rehabilitated. The elections of August 2020 were the classic straw that broke the camel’s back. The current situation is unlikely to change things. Also because developments are becoming more and more worrying. In the past few hours, the Polish security authorities have arrested about 50 migrants near the border with Belarus. Previously, the Polish Defense Minister, Mariusz Baszczak, had announced that there had been many attempts to breach the border during the night, adding that there are currently about 15,000 soldiers lined up at the border. The fence built on the border was broken several times, with various groups of migrants who managed to enter Polish territory, in particular in the villages of Krynki and Bialowieza.
Migrant crisis between Belarus and Poland, Germany wants sanctions against Lukashenko
The European Union has identified the culprit precisely in the Lukashenko regime. Above all, Germany has returned to urge new EU sanctions against Minsk, accusing Lukashenko of “unscrupulous” exploitation of migrants by sending them to the border with Poland. The German foreign minister, Heiko Maas, said: “We will sanction all those involved in the targeted smuggling of migrants”, announced Maas according to whom the EU will work to “extend and strengthen sanctions against the Lukashenko regime”. According to the German diplomat, the EU “cannot be blackmailed”. But this has already happened more than once precisely with Erdogan’s Turkey.
Russia’s long hand behind the crisis between Poland and Belarus?
Meantime, Russia and Belarus are united on the crisis front, fueling the theory that the long hand of the Kremlin is behind the affair. Lavrov he was the protagonist of a joint press conference with his Belarusian counterpart Vladimir Makei, at the end of the annual meeting of the Russian and Belarusian foreign ministries colleges. Both have defined “unacceptable“Western unilateral sanctions without the approval of the United Nations Security Council,” used as a tool to combat unwanted regimes. “And also on the strategic front, two Russian bombers long-range Tu-22m3 carried out patrol flights in Belarusian airspace. The ministry added that Russian aircraft “perform combat alert duties for air defense in the Russian-Belarus State Union regional air defense system”.
Behind the crisis there is in fact a much broader geopolitical question. On the one hand the approach of NATO on the borders of the state union Russia-Belarus, on the other hand, the attempt to re-credit the Lukashenko regime or at least give it an honorable exit from the scene. Both points of view, however, risk jumping also for the interests of another actor, which complicate the story and make it less simple in the dichotomous division between good and bad. It is, of course, dela Poland, who may have seen in the situation that directly involves her a problem capable of transforming itself into an opportunity.
The crisis “magnified” by Poland in search of negotiating levers with Brussels?
Warsaw is in fact involved in a very hard confrontation with Brussels and after a sentence by its constitutional court which places Polish law above Community law, there is more and more talk of Polexit. Well, amplifying the scale of the current crisis could not only attract sympathy and help Warsaw, but also to place it in a better negotiating position with the EU institutions. For example, Matteo Villa, head of the ISPI migration program argues, who explained to AdnKronos that the problem is “magnified”, given that it would be a question of 2500 migrants who are pressing to enter EU territory. Even if the Polish authorities speak of very different and identifiable numbers in the order of several tens of thousands. But according to Villa, Poland is “riding the crisis”. A crisis that mainly involves Germany, a favorite destination for migrants arriving from Afghanistan and Iraq. Perhaps this also explains the diligence with which Berlin wants to hit Minsk.
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