They try to break through the barrier: stones and bottles fly at the deployed agents, the military uses water cannons to disperse them
The eighth day of the crisis at the Kuznica-Bruzgi crossing begins with a siege. On the Polish-Belarusian border, where 3,500 people remain within walking distance of the forbidden dream of seeking political asylum on the territory of the European Union, stones, bottles, pieces of wood, shovels and pegs used to set up tents fly. They are thrown by a hundred migrants towards the Polish military, deployed just behind the barbed wire wall that divides Belarus and Europe. They are almost all young Iraqi boys who try to open a passage between the mesh of the fence, but who are repelled by the jets of water cannons exploded by the blue trucks of the border guards. It seems like nothing, but with the thermometer that fell 3 degrees below zero during the night, being soaked means risking frostbite. The roar of sirens overcomes the emergency curtain that no one can cross from the border and inland on Polish territory. They are the ambulances that transport the soldiers injured by the clashes, in the end there will be seven in all, including one serious, but out of danger, with a fractured skull. As the convoys move towards the hospital in Bialystok, columns of grayish smoke rise into the sky, the last traces of the nocturnal campfires lit by the migrants in the umpteenth night spent in the heart of the eastern region of Podlachia. They spread in the direction of the helicopters patrolling the border line and which yesterday contributed to the push-back of another 224 people, with five arrests and 29 decrees of immediate expulsion from the country. “We have no intention of it but, if necessary, we will be ready to use weapons”, said at the press conference the spokeswoman for the Polish border guards, Anna Michalska, according to which among the migrant groups there are also Belarusian officers in civilian clothes. among the key players in coordinating yesterday’s attack. The Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov takes the opposite view, according to whom the Polish army, using tear gas and water cannons against migrants, has violated the rules of international humanitarian law. Furthermore, Lavrov again rejected the accusations against Russia regarding Moscow’s involvement in the migration crisis. After the first contact on Monday, the dictator Lukashenko, according to reports from the Belarusian news agency Belta, will have a second telephone conversation with Angela Merkel during this week, to deepen the European position on the Minsk proposal to resolve the crisis. The hypothesis of opening a table comes immediately after the approval by the EU of new sanctions against Belarus and while the project of repatriation flights that should return migrants, on a voluntary basis, to Baghdad begins to take shape. “We are working on this with the Belarusian authorities,” said the Iraqi consul for Russia and Belarus, Majid al-Kinani, who announced the first evacuation trip for Thursday. Until nowAbout 200 Iraqis already registered in Minsk to return home, with many others at the border who have expressed their willingness to be repatriated but who, according to al-Kinani, are currently blocked by the Belarusian authorities, who do not allow migrants to return to the capital.
To prevent new departures, the head of the German federal police Dieter Romann yesterday sent a message broadcast live on the Kurdish-Iraqi television RUDAW TV, explaining that “the Polish border is and will remain closed”.
The diplomatic discussion continues on the possibility that Lithuania, Latvia and Poland require the activation of article number 4 of the NATO treaty, which provides for consultations in the event of a threat to the territorial integrity, political independence or security of a member country. “If the situation were to degenerate, it is possible that further border crossings with Belarus will be closed,” Marcin Przydacz, deputy head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, announced Tuesday on TVp, Polish state television, – who then expressed the hope that Poland should not use art. 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty. “I hope it’s not necessary, but it’s one of the options on the table should the situation get worse.” Przydacz’s statements are paired with those of Defense Minister Mariusz Błaszczak, who thanking the soldiers working at the border announced cash prizes for the Polish soldiers who are managing the crisis. Just last Monday, on the other hand, Adam Glapiński, the president of Narodowy Bank Polski, the central bank of Poland, had announced the decision to issue a series of commemorative coins and banknotes dedicated to the defense of the Polish eastern border, a further sign of how the national government led by Mateusz Morawiecki is working hard to turn the crisis into a showdown against the European Union and a huge election spot on the home front.
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