Refugees gather in the Belarusian-Polish border region in Grodno, Belarus, on November 15.
Recently, the border area between Poland and Belarus has become the latest front line for the Western camp to compete with the Russian-Belarusian alliance, and tens of thousands of Middle Eastern refugees are currently stranded on the border between Belarus and the European Union. After the threat of mutual confrontation and the threat of sanctions, Poland sent 15,000 soldiers to the border to prevent refugees from entering, German armored troops entered Poland to provide "protection assistance", and Britain also sent engineering troops to help Poland build a border wall, and the refugee crisis intensified for a time.
Tens of thousands of refugees travelled to Western Europe via Belarus
The European Union pressured Turkey and Iraq to soften
Since the spread of the new crown epidemic, countries have strengthened border controls, and it has been difficult for middle-east refugees to enter the European Union through the Mediterranean Sea or Greece and Turkey, and water and land routes have been almost interrupted.
Between August and early November this year, about 40 weekly flights transport refugees from Istanbul, Turkey, to Minsk, the capital of Belarus, from Istanbul, Turkey. As the Middle Eastern refugees tried to enter Poland and Lithuania via Belarus and then to Western European countries such as Germany, the pressure on the border between The two countries increased. According to Polish statistics, the number of refugees trying to cross the border since August has exceeded 30,000.
Migrants from the Belarusian-Polish border build a fire to warm up in a camp in Grodno, Belarus, on Nov. 14.
Under pressure from the European Union, turkey's aviation ministry issued a statement on November 12 saying that Turkey has begun to restrict flights to Belarus: it will no longer sell one-way tickets between Turkish cities and Minsk; passengers with Iraqi, Syrian and Yemeni passports will be banned from flying from Turkish airports to Belarus. The Iraqi government also said on November 15 that it would arrange a flight home on the 18th for Iraqi citizens stranded near the border between Poland and Belarus on the basis of a "voluntary" principle. A spokesman for Iraq's Foreign Ministry said Iraq was aware of 571 Iraqi citizens stranded at the border and said they were ready to return home "voluntarily."
The battle was lost, and the EU threatened further sanctions
Belarus: Repeated sanctions have left it unable to control the flow of refugees
On November 9, the European Commission accused Belarus of luring migrants with false promises of easy access to the EU in an inhumane, gangster way and sending them to the border in order to orchestrate a border crisis against neighboring countries and Europe.
Belarus insists that the migrants arrived there legally and that it was only transferred "as a hospitable country". Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko rebuked Poland and the European Union for being "unreasonable" and threatened to close the gas supply pipeline to Europe through Belarus.
Putin said that western military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have caused a large number of refugees, and at the same time, Europe's high welfare policies have also made refugees choose them as destinations. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zakharova said: "More than 2,000 Polish soldiers invaded Iraq to 'establish democracy'. Why doesn't Poland receive as many 'grateful Iraqis' as possible today? ”
Migrants from the Polish-Belarusian border on 15 November.
The first round of air-called the EU did not take advantage, so it began to wield the sanctions stick. The foreign ministers of EU member states met on November 15 to agree to impose new sanctions on Belarus. Eu High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Borrelli said the new sanctions will be targeted at some individuals and entities, and specific measures will be announced in the coming days. At the same time, the United States also said that it would coordinate with the European Union to impose more sanctions on Belarus. The Belarusian side said that it is the successive sanctions imposed by the West that have made it difficult for the domestic economy to bear the cost of strict border control and unable to control the flow of refugees.
European and Western countries have so far imposed several rounds of sanctions on Belarus. Among them, since October 2020, the EUROPEAN Union has imposed four rounds of sanctions on Belarus on the grounds of fraud in the Belarusian presidential election in August of that year, involving 166 individuals and 15 entities, and the main content of the sanctions is travel bans and asset freezes. Following the Ryanair incident in May, the EU banned all Belarusian flights from flying over EU airspace and into EU airports in June and imposed targeted economic sanctions.
At a regular press conference on November 16, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian expressed the hope that the relevant parties will properly handle relevant issues through dialogue and consultation on the basis of equality and mutual respect and in accordance with humanitarian principles. China opposes the frequent imposition of unilateral sanctions or the threat of sanctions in international affairs.
Contradictions within the EU are prominent
German armored forces entered Poland after 82 years
In this refugee crisis, although Poland and Lithuania on the front line have the EU as a backing, their contradictions with the EU have also been highlighted in the process of handling the crisis. The two countries hope to restrict the entry of migrants by building a "separation wall", but the EU has long refused to fund the construction of the wall for political and humanitarian reasons, and only recently under pressure has it "relaxed".
In addition, Poland objected to the EU's meddling in its handling of border refugees, not allowing journalists and personnel of the European Border Agency to travel to the border areas, and ignoring the european Court of Human Rights' request for support at the border.
On 12 November, Poland announced that it had reached an agreement with Britain that it would send troops to help Poland build a strong border wall on its eastern border with Belarus.
According to European media reports, while accepting the help of the British army, the Polish side repeatedly rejected Germany's proposal for border "protection assistance". However, although Poland has deployed 15,000 troops on the border, there are still a large number of heavy equipment such as armored vehicles of the German armed forces in Poland.
A large number of German armored vehicles and self-propelled guns appear near the Polish-Belarusian border Source: Overseas Network
Witnesses said that in the olsztyn area of the northern Polish city of Olsztyn, 66 kilometers from the Polish-Belarusian border, a large amount of German heavy armored equipment was being transported by rail to the border between Poland and Belarus, including armored vehicles, self-propelled guns and so on. The last time German armored forces entered Poland was on September 1, 1939, when they blitzed into Poland.
Britain and Russia also started a "war of words"
Vladimir Putin: We are willing to help resolve the crisis
While sending engineers to assist Poland, British and Russian officials also fought a "war of words."
British Foreign Secretary Elizabeth Tras blamed Moscow for the refugee crisis and called on Russia to put pressure on Minsk to end the problem.
Zakharova replied: Britain assisted the United States in invading Iraq and therefore has a clear historical responsibility for everything that has happened in the region since that moment – the deaths of Iraqis, the destruction of the Iraqi state, the steady stream of refugees, the emergence of the Islamic State, the humanitarian catastrophe in the region.
However, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia is willing to promote the resolution of the migration crisis on the Belarusian-Polish border in various ways, but only if there are factors that depend on Russia.
(Public Network poster news editor Jiang Hui comprehensive CCTV, Xinhua net, overseas network, etc.)