More on the Border Crisis with Belarus

BELARUS - NOVEMBER 15: Irregular migrants with new irregular migrant groups are seen following their arrival at the border line and they continue to wait at the Polish-Belarusian border during cold weather on November 15, 2021 in Belarus. (Photo by Stringer/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
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Why is this happening? A summary from RFERL.org

As thousands of migrants stream into Belarus and toward its borders with Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia, fears are mounting that the former Soviet republic’s leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka is exploiting the desperation of new arrivals from the Middle East and Africa to settle scores with governments that have ostracized his regime.

Since his disputed reelection in an August 2020 vote widely seen as rigged, Lukashenka brutally cracked down on opposition to his 27-year rule and engaged in aggressive words with Western officials who back the imposition of sanctions on his regime.
On November 9, Warsaw-based political analyst Dmitry Bolkunets said “Lukashenka is banking on provoking some sort of small war to distract attention from domestic problems in Belarus today. He wants to focus attention on himself and force Western countries to begin negotiations with him”.  The European Union’s executive commission accused Lukashenka of an “inhuman and really gangster-style approach” to those who arrive in Belarus hoping for easy passage into the EU.

Some calls for a de-escalation point to Moscow. On November 10, German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to use his influence with Belarus to halt its “inhumane and unacceptable” use of migrants. Russia has long supported Lukashenka with subsidized energy shipments and verbal backing in disputes with the West, and many believe Lukashenka’s dependence on Moscow has only increased as he falls deeper into disfavour with the West, giving Putin increasing power over a leader who has frequently played Russia off against the West in the past.

As Lukashenka continues issuing defiant statements and warning Poland of consequences if it sends more troops to its border with Belarus, Russia may be hopingn to arbitrate in the standoff as it has in previous conflicts in the post-Soviet space.

Lukashenka has consulted regularly with Putin in the past year. In a call broadcast on Russian state TV on November 4, Putin pledged to back Lukashenka against foreign “interference” and praised relations between the ex-Soviet countries as the two men signed a series of agreements on closer integration. Some EU leaders have suggested that Moscow is ultimately behind what Merkel has described as “state-backed human trafficking” by Lukashenka’s government. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who met with the European Council president on November 10, said the current crisis marks the first time since the end of communist rule in Eastern Europe that “the integrity of our borders is being tested”. He blamed Russia, saying in the Polish parliament that “the attack which Lukashenka is conducting has its mastermind in Moscow, the mastermind is President Putin.”

While Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the suggestion as “irresponsible and unacceptable”, the most bellicose wording has come from Lukashenka in recent weeks, including his threats of using assistance from the Russian armed forces to provoke a military standoff on Belarus’s border with Poland.

Petras Austrevičius, an EU parliament MP from Lithuania, said “Lukashenka is a known racketeer, he has long exploited Putin, and [Putin] has paid money” in an interview with Current Time, the Russian-language network led by RFE/RL in cooperation with Voice of America. “And obviously he uses the Russia factor to intimidate and predict certain events”.

On November 10, Russia sent air force bombers into Belarusian airspace on what its Defense Ministry said was a routine exercise. Pushing that line, senior Russian officials have cited troop contributions by Poland and other EU states to Western military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, and alleged that those countries are at least in part to blame for the instability that reigns in those countries today and forces thousands to seek better lives elsewhere.
Russia’s UN ambassador and the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman advanced the same narrative, suggesting that Poland is to blame for the border crisis, not Belarus, while presenting no evidence to counter accusations that Minsk is engineering a flow of migrants to EU borders.

Abbas Gallyamov, a political analyst and former Kremlin speechwriter, said that, at the very least, Merkel’s call on Putin to exert influence with Minsk may be used as fodder for that same official narrative – to suggest to the Russian people, at least, that the West is desperate for Putin to step in as an arbiter and save the day.

Abridged from RFERL.org