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The Polish government accused Belarus on November 3 of organizing a cross-border armed intrusion and summoned the Belarusian charge d’affaires to protest what it calls “a deliberate escalation” of the migration crisis at the border.
“Deliberate escalation” of the migration crisis at the border. Thus the Government of Poland signaled a new incursion of Belarusian soldiers into its territory.
The tension between the two countries increased this Wednesday, November 3, when Poland assured that soldiers from its neighboring country with long-range weapons crossed into its territory, in what it describes as a clear violation of the sovereignty of its territory.
According to the spokesman for the Polish security services, the Belarusian military crossed approximately 300 meters of the space of their country, where they challenged a patrol of the Polish forces.
The military from the neighboring country “reloaded their weapons and then left (…) It was enough to assume that it was not a mistake,” said the source.
The Warsaw spokesman added that there has been a “series of provocations organized by the Belarusians, but that this was the most dangerous incident so far.”
In the past, the government of President Andrzej Duda has accused Belarusian forces of pointing their guns in the air and firing blank guns at Polish soldiers or guards. He has also held them responsible for destroying a barbed wire barrier on the border between the two countries and encouraging migrants to do so.
The Polish Government summons the Belarusian business representative
In response to what Warsaw considers a cross-border intrusion, the government summoned the business representative of the Lukashenko Administration to protest what happened and “explain the incident immediately”.
“The Deputy Foreign Minister, Piotr Wawrzyk, sent an emphatic protest (…) against the violation of the Polish state border, emphasizing that the actions taken by the Belarusian authorities in recent weeks bear the increasingly evident stamp of a deliberate escalation. (…) Poland considers such actions unacceptable and will not tolerate them, ”the ministry said in a statement.
However, the spokesman for the Belarusian Border Guard State Committee, Anton Bychkovsky, denied the accusation and stated that the accusations against his country are only intended to allow Poland to extend the state of emergency that governs the border, since last September 2.
“This suggests that the main objective of these actions lies in the field of escalating tension and new attempts to create a negative image of Belarus,” the official told the state news agency Belta.
The spokesman for the European Commission, Peter Stano, indicated that, if this latest territorial intrusion is confirmed, “it would be another provocation on the side of the Lukashenko regime against the European Union and its member states.”
Poland to build a wall on the border with Belarus
The new dispute follows months of accusations against Minsk for deliberately encouraging a flow of migrants to the European Union through Polish territory.
According to accusations from Brussels, in recent months thousands of migrants mainly from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Africa have been lured to Belarus on tourist visas and encouraged to cross into Poland, Lithuania and, to a lesser extent, to Latvia. All three are nations of the European Union (EU).
The EU and the Government of Poland affirm that it is a “hybrid war” and retaliation by the Belarusian president for the economic sanctions that the bloc of 27 countries has imposed against him.
The measures against the Lukashenko administration have been imposed after the controversial elections of August 2020, in which he was re-elected amid accusations of fraud and the repression that he has unleashed since then against opponents and hundreds of protesters.
It was due to the dizzying flow of migration from Belarus that Poland decreed a state of emergency in September and extended it for two more months on October 1.
Against this background, on Tuesday, November 2, the Polish president signed the law that will allow the construction of a wall on the border with Belarus, after the initiative was approved in both houses of Parliament.
The wall will cost approximately 330 million euros and will have an electronic surveillance system valued at more than 20 million euros.
According to data from the Polish Border Guard, since the beginning of 2021 there have been some 29,000 attempts to enter Poland irregularly from Belarus. Of these, more than 15,000 occurred in October.
With Reuters and AP
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