Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
BELARUS’S STRONGMAN LEADER Alexander Lukashenko vowed to respond to any new sanctions imposed over the migrant crisis on his country’s border with Poland, including by potentially cutting off the transit of natural gas to Europe.
“If they impose additional sanctions on us… we must respond,” Lukashenko said in comments to officials in Minsk released by the presidency.
“We are warming Europe, and they are threatening us,” he said, pointing out that Russia’s Yamal-Europe gas pipeline transits through Belarus to Poland.
“And what if we halt natural gas supplies?”
Pressure is building to address the plight of hundreds of migrants, mainly Kurds from the Middle East, who are stuck at the Belarus-Poland border in freezing weather.
The UN Security Council was to meet later today for emergency talks on the crisis, after international appeals to deal with the refugees’ plight.
The West accuses Lukashenko of luring the migrants to Belarus to send them across the border, in revenge for sanctions imposed last year after a heavy crackdown on the opposition.
EU officials say they expect to approve new sanctions over the migrant crisis next week.
Poland has deployed 15,000 troops along the border, put up a fence topped with barbed wire and approved construction of a wall on the frontier with Belarus.
In a statement released for Poland’s Independence Day today, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said his country was facing a “new kind of war” whose “ammunition is civilians”.
Poland accuses Belarus of using intimidation to force migrants to breach the frontier and refusing to allow them to leave border areas.
Belarus has in turn accused Poland of violating international norms by blocking the migrants and violently beating them back.
Migrants have been trying to cross the border for months but the crisis came to a head when hundreds made a concerted effort on Monday and were pushed back by Polish border guards.
They set up a camp on the border, sheltering in tents and burning wood from local forests to keep warm, blocked by Polish guards behind razor-wire. Belarus says some 2,000 people are living at the camp.
Teams from the UN refugee agency, the International Organization for Migration and the Red Cross visited the camp today to check on conditions and deliver aid, including hygiene kits and diapers.
“Priorities now are to prevent loss of life and move people to safer locations in Belarus,” UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi said on Twitter.
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis told reporters his country was pushing for an evacuation corridor from the border to the Belarusian city of Grodno, which has an airport that could be used to send people back to their home countries.
The migrants have been making sporadic attempts to cross, with Polish border guards reporting 468 attempts overnight.
At least 10 migrants have died on the border, seven of them on the Polish side, according to Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza.
Journalists and charity workers have been banned from the immediate border area by Polish authorities under state of emergency rules.
Residents in the Polish town of Sokolka near the border said they were worried by the growing tensions but voiced support for the Polish government’s tough stance.
“I’m afraid of the migrants getting through and what the consequences would be,” said Henryk Lenkiewicz, a 67-year-old pensioner walking by a community noticeboard in the town centre.
European leaders have been putting pressure on Lukashenko’s main backer, Russian President Vladimir Putin.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel telephoned Putin yesterday to ask him “to use his influence” to stop what she called an “inhumane” instrumentalisation of migrants.
Poland has accused Putin of masterminding the crisis, a claim the Kremlin has dismissed as “irresponsible”.
France’s Europe Minister Clement Beaune said today there was no evidence that Russia was involved in trafficking migrants, adding it should be “part of the solution because Belarus is more and more dependent on Moscow”.
Moscow and Minsk have close economic, political and military ties and Russian air force planes have been flying patrols over Belarus this week, including two Tu-160 strategic bombers today that were accompanied by Belarusian Su-30S fighter jets.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
I’m sure Russia would love that, given they would be economically affected by Belarus’ childishness. I say pile up sanctions on Belarus.
@Seán Ó Briain: and freeze to death in the process
@DERRY1973: You won’t freeze to death, you lads have turf
@DERRY1973: freeze to death hardly…. humans survived the last ice age we can surely manage 7 degree weather
@Gerrard: you know that humans barely survived right? Mortality was pretty high.
Anyway this is a wake up call for Europe. Start building infrastructure. Build out nuclear and wind, of which we have plenty, and solar of which we have some.
@Seán Ó Briain: Russia are probably behind all the latest moves
@Seán Ó Briain: Naa, Im sure Russia could just run it all through their pipelines that run through their good friend Ukraine. Yep. Unless Belarus plans on buying all of Russia’s EU-bound gas, I’m guessing Moscow won’t be able to afford to let Belarus keep this nonsense going. Europe won’t freeze. American LNG producers might be in for a really good year though.
Well done to Poland for standing their ground..
“Pressure is building to address the plight of migrants who are stuck at the Belarus-Poland border in freezing weather.”
Really? There’s a groundswell of EU citizens who want to see these people who are attacking the border admitted? Or is it more the case that open borders NGOs do and you’re presenting that “pressure” as something that has widespread public support?
Yet another convenient excuse to increase energy prices.
@Richard Ahern: it’s a sad reflection on western society that energy prices is your first concern.
@Connor Coady: maybe it’s a concern because we have to spend our money on fuel to go to work and feed and heat our children when all money is gone on bills is that not a concern clown
@Connor Coady: No Connor Coady, it’s not my first concern at all, but it is something that will probably be used to extract more money from developed nations and will be of zero benefit to those who should have benefitted. Somewhat poisonous and leads to further alienating the consumes from the suppliers. Not nice.
@Connor Coady: spoken no doubt from a leafy suburb and a high BER rating. The migrants are in any case being used by Belorussia – they flew to the country.
@Gerrard: Yeah, you could be sleeping in a forest, clown
@john smith iv: bit presumptuous there John, not true in any case.
@Richard Ahern: Fully agree, Why didn’t you put it like that to begin with?
Russia wont allow their revenue be disrupted. Time to pile on the sanctions on Belarus!
@Shane De Paor: exactly. Not a hope Vlad would permit it.
I posted a reply to a comment earlier describing the migrants at the border as people who have paid thousands of euro at the invitation of a criminal dictator to attempt to break into the EU in order to take advantage of a humanitarian law which most of them will not be entitled to. It was deleted. What part of my post was objectionable and why was it deleted @journal.ie?
Time to take him out. Another dictator that thinks he can do as he likes and expects to just get away with it.
@Brian Kelly: You mean Boris?
Good old Vladimir, pushing his crazy pal closer to the cliff. Belarus stops supply and increases the positives of having Nord2 and potential for another. By passing Ukraine and oddly enough Belarus who’ll both lose out because of it. Only one loser in all this is Belarusian people again and those poor migrants being ferried in and left to freeze, probably wished they’d stayed in warmer climates under threat of possible death no certain death in some freezing Belarusian blackwater. Lukashenko has some game of chess on his hands. Do as he’s told and be ruined everywhere else on the planet, don’t do as he’s told and disappear!
Hard to believe we live on the same planet as those so called leaders! it’s dispicable to use people as political pawns and leave people in limbo. please vote them out people!
It’s a tactic Turkey uses against the EU and gets paid. Lukashenko needs a cash cow.
Lukashenko may loose this battle but he still has hostages. He can block foreign aid or build-up numbers for another attack. Pushing people to this limit for survival can only end in more deaths. How long has this attack being planned? What is the estimated cost in lives?
The EU must come together and take this power to use other human beings away from evil men and criminals. An European wide immigration policy is needed so countries like Greece and Poland are not left alone.
Its up to Brussels to act not pay more blackmail demands. What will gravy train central respond?
@leartius: What in the record of previous EU actions on border issues gives you confidence that anything other than capitulation to blackmail will occur? The EU claim the Visegrad countries do not hold to “EU Values”? I don’t remember ever seeing such values voted upon or otherwise agreed but they are, funnily enough, the exact same values as espoused by the likes of Varadkar, Rutte, Verhofstadt etc. When Hungary spent billions on securing their border from illegal crossings they were heavily criticized by the same mob in Brussels. They sent a billion of our tax to the Taliban. Haven’t helped Poland or Hungary with a cent towards securing the border. It’s almost as if they want to portray these mass-incursions as purely humanitarian events only monsters wouldn’t respond to by admitting everyone who comes. It’s unsustainable and a vast majority of EU citizens want it to stop. Is anyone listening?
Thats’s exactly why the NordStream 2 pipeline from St. Petersburg to Germany was built.
At least that way we might cut our co²
@Aidan Haughey: Nah. We’re going to do that by cutting our herd and have the Brazilians slash-and-burn virgin rainforest so they can raise the beef there instead.
have your say