What’s happening at the Belarus-Poland border?

The exact number of people around the frontier remains unclear: Belarusian border guards have mentioned about 2,000 people, while Polish authorities estimated up to 4,000. Videos shared by the Polish Defense Ministry this week showed crowds massed next to the fence near the village of Kuznica, with some people trying to cut through the razor wire as guards pushed them back. Poland, where the ruling party espouses a hard-line stance against immigration, has vowed “they will not come in .” More than 12,000 troops have arrived to reinforce the border, which the Polish prime minister visited at sunrise Tuesday. The battle over migration has left asylum seekers stuck in a border zone where at least eight people died in recent months. U.N. agencies have urged the two countries not to use refugees as political pawns. Many have trekked from Iraq, Afghanistan , and parts of the Middle East and Africa for the promise of refuge in Europe, only to end up in a cluster of makeshift tents in the woods. Some need food and shelter or risk getting hypothermia, according to aid groups.

How is the European Union involved?

European leaders have accused Belarus of inviting in migrants to send them on to Poland and nearby Lithuania, both E.U. member states, so as to engineer a crisis — a move they have described as “a hybrid attack.” They blame Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who faces sanctions over human rights violations and the forced diversion of a Ryanair flight to arrest an opposition journalist in May. After the latest sanctions against Minsk, the president warned his country would no longer stop asylum seekers, drugs or nuclear materials from entering the 27-member bloc. More migrants have since boarded flights to Minsk to try their luck crossing into the European Union. While permission to enter countries in Europe is usually hard to obtain, Belarus has made visas available on arrival. E.U. governments, which tightened visa rules for Belarusian state officials on Tuesday, have threatened more sanctions. Their joint border control agency, Frontex, stands ready to help but Poland has yet to request this, the European Commission spokesman for migration, Adalbert Jahnz, has said.

How does this affect relations between Belarus and Poland?

The crisis has poisoned already tense relations between Belarus and Poland, a NATO member since 1999. The friction, brewing for months, deepened last week when Poland accused armed Belarusian guards of violating the border, forging several hundred yards into its territory overnight. Belarus in turn accused Poland of lying to demonize it and of stoking tensions. Backed up by Russia, Belarus denies provoking a crisis, instead maintaining that the actions of its neighbors had forced refugees to take desperate measures. Officials in Warsaw have warned of an armed escalation near the border, blaming the rise in tensions in part on Moscow, which rejects the accusation. But even before this dispute, relations between Minsk and Warsaw were sour, as Poland welcomed Belarusian opposition activists who fled a punishing crackdown after the August 2020 Belarusian presidential election . Protests erupted disputing the election result, in the biggest threat to Lukashenko’s power since he took office in 1994. He has jailed political opponents, forcing activists and others to flee to Poland and neighboring countries, from where many helped coordinate the protest movement in Belarus. Read more: ‘They will not come in’: Mounting standoff over migrants on Poland-Belarus border Trapped between Poland and Belarus, 32 Afghans — and their cat — have become symbols of Europe’s new border crisis Belarus once cultivated high-tech talent. Now those people are fleeing political crackdowns.

World

Migrants trapped in Poland-Belarus standoff: What to know

Migrants camped out on the Belarus side of the border between Belarus and Poland on Nov. 10. (Polish Defense Ministry/Reuters)

By Ellen Francis

and

Robyn Dixon

November 10, 2021 at 7:01 a.m. EST

By Ellen Francis

and

Robyn Dixon

November 10, 2021 at 7:01 a.m. EST

Hundreds of migrants are stranded in the cold on the border between Belarus and Poland, caught up in a geopolitical standoff on Europe’s eastern edge.

The European Union, like Poland and the U.S. State Department, accuses Belarus of sending throngs of people to the border to pressure its neighbors, a claim the country denies. But in the frigid forests between the two countries, rising numbers of refugees have been camped out for days, and aid workers warn they need help.

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