The United Kingdom has deployed troops to assist Poland in securing its border with Belarus, where tens of thousands of people – mainly from the Middle East, Asia and Africa – have been trying to cross into the European Union.
The deployment comes amid worries of a possible armed escalation in the region, with Belarusian and Russian paratroopers holding joint drills today. Russia and western countries have also clashed over the issue at an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council.
Poland’s defence minister, Mariusz Błaszczak, announced today that British Royal Engineers would help with a “reconnaissance” mission to examine how the frontier can be strengthened. Poland has already deployed 15,000 soldiers there and approved plans to build an “impenetrable” wall along the border.
“Our forces will co-operate in strengthening the border,” said Błaszczak. The deployment of British troops to Poland was a sign of “allied solidarity,” according to state press agency PAP.
Britain’s defence ministry also confirmed that it had deployed “a small team of UK armed forces personnel to explore how we can provide engineering support to address the ongoing situation at the Belarus border”. It added that “the UK and Poland have a long history of friendship and are NATO allies”.
Full statement: https://t.co/v2xb50cMYE
— Jakub Krupa (@JakubKrupa) November 12, 2021
The 10 deployed troops will operate as part of an American battlegroup under NATO and will be stationed near the town of Orzysz in northeastern Poland.
The announcement comes on the same day as Russian paratroopers joined drills at the Gozhsky training grounds in Belarus, which involved practising landings and combat training.
The manoeuvres are a response to “the growing military activity near the state border of Belarus”, said the Belarusian defence ministry, quoted by TVN24. Earlier this week, Russia sent two nuclear-capable strategic bombers on training missions over Belarus.
Russia has sent paratroopers to Belarus for exercises to test the readiness of rapid response forces due to an “increase of military activities near the Belarusian border” https://t.co/4BCoxnTcRY
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) November 12, 2021
Western governments and organisations, including the EU and NATO, have accused Belarus of using migrants to as part of a “hybrid” attack in reprisal for sanctions imposed earlier this year. The EU is currently preparing a new raft of sanctions against Minsk.
At an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council yesterday, western members – including France, the UK and the US – issued a joint statement accusing Belarus of putting the lives of migrants in danger “for political purposes”. Russia rejected the accusations and claimed that Poland and Lithuania are mistreating migrants.
Following diplomatic efforts by the EU, Turkey yesterday banned Syrian, Yemeni and Iraqi citizens from flights to Minsk to seal off a route used by thousands of migrants to reach Belarus’s borders with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.
More than 33,000 attempts to illegally enter Poland have been recorded by the Polish border guard so far this year, compared to just 120 in the whole of 2020.
The situation escalated earlier this week when thousands of people gathered at one point on the border, with some attempting to force their way through it. A number of other large breaches have been reported by the Polish authorities this week.
Independent verification of the situation at the border is made almost impossible due to the Polish government introducing a state of emergency there that bans non-resident civilians – including media and NGOs – from entering the area.
Main image credit: Irek Dorozanski / DWOT (under CC BY-NC-ND 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.
