Poland has summoned the Belarusian chargé d’affaires for talks after unidentified armed people in uniform were seen entering Polish territory across the countries’ shared border.
The incident comes amid a growing surge of crossings over the border by migrants and refugees – mainly from the Middle East, Asia and Africa – that has been orchestrated by the Belarusian authorities in what Warsaw sees as part of a “hybrid war” against it and the European Union with Russian backing.
Kolejna prowokacja! We wtorek w nocy (2 listopada o godz. 1:45) polscy żołnierze zauważyli na terytorium RP trzy umundurowane osoby, z bronią długą.
Po próbie nawiązania kontaktu przez polski patrol, nieznane osoby przeładowały broń, a potem oddaliły się w kierunku Białorusi.
— Stanisław Żaryn (@StZaryn) November 3, 2021
This morning, the spokesman for Poland’s security services, Stanisław Żaryn, announced that at around 1:45 a.m. on 2 November Polish soldiers saw three uniformed people armed with rifles on Polish territory.
“After the Polish patrol tried to make contact, the unknown persons reloaded their weapons and departed in the direction of Belarus,” said Żaryn.
The spokesman for Poland’s foreign ministry, Łukasz Jasina, further revealed today that the Belarusian chargé d’affaires, Aleksandr Czasnouski, had been summoned to the ministry yesterday.
Deputy foreign minister Piotr Wawrzyk conveyed a protest to Czasnouski regarding the violation of the border. Wawrzyk also stressed that “the actions taken by the Belarusian authorities in recent weeks have more and more evident signs of a deliberate escalation”, said Jasina, quoted by TVP Info.
“[Wawrzyk] emphasised that such actions are unacceptable…[and] that Poland was determined to protect its own borders and the external borders of the European Union,” added Jasina. “Together with the entire community of democratic states of the Euro-Atlantic community, we will consistently oppose the illegal migration organised by Minsk.”
Since the summer, thousands of people have sought to cross from Belarus into Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. The governments of those countries, as well as the European Commission, have condemned the “instrumentalisation” of migration by Minsk.
The number of attempts to illegally cross into Poland from Belarus recorded by Polish border guards:
– August: 3,500
– September: 7,700
– October: 16,800By comparison, in the whole of 2020 the figure was just 120https://t.co/IVOPa4puQw
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) November 2, 2021
Main image credit: Adam Guz/KPRM (under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
