According to Germany, Poland and other EU countries, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko has set a policy of collecting migrants from countries like Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan and then sending them to the borders with EU countries, in order to protect the EU. . They will be countermeasures to the sanctions imposed by the European Union after the violent suppression of the protests.
Mas accused Lukashenko of “unscrupulous exploitation of migrants” by sending them to the Polish border. “We will punish everyone who engages in targeted smuggling of migrants,” he said, calling on the European Union to “extend and toughen EU sanctions against Lukashenko’s regime. The EU cannot be blackmailed.”
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Thousands of migrants were stranded in cold weather on the border between Belarus and Poland on Tuesday, and Warsaw accused the government in Minsk of using them to threaten European security. The Ministry of Defense of Belarus described the allegations as “baseless”.
Maas described the scenes at the Polish-Belarus border as “terrifying” and warned Lukashenko that he was embarking on a “dangerous escalation from which there will be no way out”.
Maas did not go into details about any additional EU sanctions against Belarus. He indicated that it could also affect other countries and even airlines, if it turns out that they are involved in the transit of illegal immigrants.
