A Belarusian soldier yesterday tried to shoot a flare gun at Polish forces while other armed Belarusians destroyed border fencing, Poland’s defence ministry has reported.
Poland notes that the incidents are the “latest provocations” at the border, where Belarus has been orchestrating the crossings of thousands of people, mainly from the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Earlier this week, Polish forces discovered a group of armed men on the Polish side of the border.
“Yesterday, a Belarusian soldier tried to fire a flare gun at Polish soldiers,” tweeted the defence ministry this morning. “Fortunately, the gun did not go off.”
“One hundred metres away, five armed Belarusians tried to destroy the [border] fence, shouting at the same time that they would shoot Polish soldiers,” the ministry continued. It added that the Belarusian group withdrew after further Polish forces arrived.
Yesterday, the Polish defence ministry also reported that Belarusian soldiers had “threatened to open fire” on Polish forces the previous day when the latter discovered a group of around 250 migrants near the border fence.
100 metrów dalej, pięciu uzbrojonych Białorusinów próbowało zniszczyć ogrodzenie, jednocześnie krzycząc, że zastrzelą polskich żołnierzy. Po wezwaniu na miejsce dodatkowych sił wojska i Straży Granicznej, Białorusini wycofali się.
— Ministerstwo Obrony Narodowej 🇵🇱 (@MON_GOV_PL) November 5, 2021
“The actions of the Belarusian soldiers looked like an attempt to escalate the situation, but also an effort to conceal the fact that a group of migrants had entered the territory of Poland,” said the ministry, quoted by Wprost.
The incident comes amid a growing surge of crossings over the border by migrants and refugees that has been orchestrated by the Belarusian authorities. Warsaw has called these actions part of a “hybrid war” against it and the European Union with Russian backing.
Earlier this week, Poland summoned the Belarusian chargé d’affaires for talks after three unidentified uniformed people armed with rifles were seen entering Polish territory.
Deputy foreign minister Piotr Wawrzyk, who spoke with the Belarusian diplomat, said that “the actions taken by the Belarusian authorities in recent weeks have more and more evident signs of a deliberate escalation”.
Yesterday, the Belarusian foreign ministry in turn summoned the Polish chargé d’affaires to “strongly protest” against Polish “provocations” at the border “aimed at creating a hostile image of Belarus”, reports Onet.
NATO this week also expressed concern at the “escalating” situation. It blamed Minski for the “unacceptable use of migrants as a hybrid tactic” and “called on Belarus to respect international law”. NATO pledged to support member states Poland, Lithuania and Latvia during the crisis.
However, Belarus’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, has claimed that Poland is in fact the aggressive party. He warned that Poland “might start a war with us” and promised a “brutal reaction” to the deployment of Polish tanks near the border.
So far this year, there have been more than 30,000 attempts to illegally cross into Poland from Belarus, according to the Polish border guard. That compares to just 120 in the whole of last year. Of these, 17,300 happened in October, almost 7,700 in September, and 3,500 in August.
Independent verification of and reporting on the situation at the border has, however, been rendered almost impossible by the president’s declaration of a state of emergency there, which bars non-resident civilians (including the media and NGOs) from entering the area.
Main image credit: Combat Camera Poland/Flickr (under CC BY-NC 2.0)
Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.
