Leverage from Minsk?

Poland: Once again more migrants at the border with Belarus

Migrants at the Poland-Belarus border

(Bild: AP)

Poland's border guard has noticed a growing number of attempted irregular border crossings at the border with Belarus in recent weeks. At the weekend alone, there were 669 such attempts, as the authority announced on X on Monday.

A spokeswoman told the PAP news agency that there had been around 3200 attempted border crossings in April and 6500 since the beginning of the year.

According to the information, border guards also arrested ten smugglers at the weekend, who were traveling with more than 20 migrants in total. According to an earlier statement by its spokesperson, the Polish border guard counts cases in which migrants have crossed the fence or a border river and are encountered by border guards on Polish territory as attempted unauthorized border crossings. However, as the border fence is also located on Polish territory, cases in which migrants were noticed directly at the fence but failed to cross the barrier are also counted as "attempted border crossings".

5.5-metre-high fence with surveillance system
In the summer of 2022, Poland secured the border with Belarus with a 5.5-metre-high fence and an electronic surveillance system. The situation there escalated in late summer and fall 2021: Thousands of people tried to enter the EU illegally. The European Union accuses Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko of bringing migrants from crisis regions to the EU's external border in an organized manner in order to exert pressure on the West.