Poland Considers Closing Its Border with Belarus

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that the government is ready to tighten sanctions against Belarus including closing border crossings to halt transit of cargo through the neighboring country, according to the Interfax news agency.

While speaking at the press conference in Tallinn, Estonia, Morawiecki said that the Belarusian side uses migrants from the Middle East as a human shield and is trying to create an energy crisis.

«This is a hybrid war; the pressure on the eastern border of the EU is rising,» he said.

The Polish government does not hide its anxiety about the behavior of the Belarusian military which may cause a rapid escalation of the conflict.

As Morawiecki noted, the Belarus authorities still put obstacles in migrants’ way back to Minsk as they have started to seek ways to return home. Some of them even reported that the Belarusian military attempted to convince them to attack the Polish border guards with knives.

This has been the largest threat to destabilize Europe for the last 30 years, he said.

The EU accuses Belarus of the creation of an artificial crisis close to the EU. The Baltic states Latvia and Lithuania also say that Minsk orchestrates inflows of migrants and describes it as a «hybrid war.» The European Commission looks the same way.

In the Polish town of Sokolka, head of the local police department, JaroslawShimchik reported migrant attacks on the police and border officials.

He said that the police possess various things migrants have thrown at the law enforcement officers. As a result of an encounter twelve people have been injured – nine of them Polish police officers including one female officer who was hit in the head with a stone.