Poland will send an additional 2,000 troops to the border with Belarus, doubling the number of soldiers stationed there supporting the border guard. The decision, which is an increase from the 1,000 reported earlier this week, was made amid a rise in irregular migrants and asylum seekers attempting to cross the border with the help of Belarusian authorities.
The soldiers will support the border guard in the Podlaskie and Lubelskie regions in eastern Poland and are expected to arrive at the border within the next two weeks.
📽️Minister Maciej Wąsik w Studiu PAP: wzmocnienie granicy polskiej będzie nie o tysiąc, a o dwa tysiące żołnierzy. Żołnierze, którzy pojawią się na granicy będą wsparciem Straży Granicznej do ochrony na granicy z Białorusią w województwie podlaskim i lubelskim.#StudioPAP… pic.twitter.com/g4CpYeuSBH
— PAP (@PAPinformacje) August 9, 2023
“We have discussed these issues during a security committee, and I have to say that the reinforcement will not amount to 1,000 but 2,000 troops,” said deputy interior minister Maciej Wąsik in an interview with the Polish Press Agency (PAP).
According to Wąsik, the pressure on the Polish border is growing, although it is still below the peak of the crisis in 2021.
Since then, Poland has erected a physical and electrical barrier at the border to prevent migrants from entering Poland. “If we had real border guards on the other side and not smuggling services, these crossings would not happen at all,” the deputy minister said of the Belarusian border guard.
Poland and Lithuania are also discussing a possible mechanism that would introduce the simultaneous closure of all Polish and Lithuanian border crossings with Belarus at the same time, as a response to actions by Belarusian authorities that the countries consider “provocations”, such as the recent case of the violation of Polish airspace by Belarusian helicopters.
Last week, the leaders of both countries warned of a possible increase in provocations from Belarusian territory. “If these provocations become more and more intrusive, then we must react together,” Wąsik said, adding that he hoped Latvia would also join the mechanism.
Polish PM warns that there will be further provocations from the Belarusian territory after Belarusian helicopters flew into Polish airspace this week.
In his opinion, Wagner Group troops may try to enter Poland disguised as migrantshttps://t.co/lTEZ8FcE3b
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) August 3, 2023
Poland currently has only one open crossing point for passenger traffic with Belarus, in Terespol, a crossing point for goods traffic only for EU states in Kukuryki, and railway crossings on the border with Belarus.
Most border crossings between Poland and Belarus have been closed as part of the Polish response to repressions by the Belarusian authorities against representatives of the Polish national minority, including, most recently, the sentencing of the Polish journalist and activist Andrzej Poczobut to eight years in a penal colony.
Lithuania announced this week that two of its six border crossings with Belarus will be closed in the near future.
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Main image credit: Polish Ministry of Defence (under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL)
Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.
