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“If a colonel couldn’t do anything, what could I do?”: A Belarusian border guard’s confession on how Belarus and Russia deliberately sparked a refugees crisis in Europe (lemmy.sdf.org)
submitted 1 day ago by Hotznplotzn@lemmy.sdf.org to c/europe@feddit.org
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In the second half of 2021, a systematic effort by the Belarusian government created a crisis on the EU’s eastern border: the authorities in Minsk began bringing would-be migrants into Belarus, then transporting them to the frontier with Poland and the Baltic states. Although Russia’s subsequent full-scale invasion of Ukraine drew attention away from the manufactured problem, the situation has only gotten worse. In 2024 alone, 17,000 people entered the EU illegally through Belarus — three times more than in the year before.

Refugees are undeterred by the physical obstacles — metal fences topped with barbed wire — which Lithuania and Poland erected in 2022 (with Latvia planning to finish its own by the end of this year). Numerous accounts have been collected showing that Belarusian border guards themselves transported migrants all the way up to the barriers, and when a similar crisis broke out on the Russian-Finnish border in 2023,

[...]

Russia’s FSB had played the leading role in creating that copycat scheme. Now, a former Belarusian border guard tells [...] how he escorted migrants to the border, while an Iranian refugee described how he managed to cross into the EU in 2023 with the help of the Belarusian authorities.

We were bound by a separate set of instructions signed by Alexander Lukashenko. For instance, it said that upon spotting a suspicious person in the border zone, we had to fire two warning shots into the air and a third directly at the person. -- A former conscript of the Belarusian Border Service.

The officers started shouting slogans about Lithuanian enemies and instructing us on how we would move migrants across the border into Lithuania. -- A former conscript of the Belarusian Border Service.

They [the Belarusian border guards] warned us: if you go back to Belarus, they’ll beat you up. --* M., an Iranian refugee*

[...]

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[-] harcesz@szmer.info 1 points 4 hours ago

Polands homogenity is a problem, absolutly. The data source your using is not up to date tho, there was some 1.5m people crossing from Ukraine alone in the first year of Russian invasion. Currently in most polish cities your as likely to hear Belarusian or Ukrainian on the streets as Polish. Plus sizable part of migration is hidden as "repatriation", just up until now nearly anyone in Belarus or Siberia could get polish citizenship by proving their Polish heritage.
But forcing people over the swamps and primival forrest in the middle of a harsh winter is not a sollution. the people who are counted here are a guesstimate. They did not register as refugees in Poland as our last two regimes block it, and most likely neither they did in Germany or whereever they went on as they would be returned to Poland and likely deported.

Im pretty sure the bodies activist kept finding in the border zone before being pushed back by millitary special zone were not bogus. I hope your concer is not just an attempt to excuse a successful attempt to destabilise our country, as thats to this manufactured crisis Polish already far right politics took an even stronger turn to the fascist side, including the supposed liberal parties. Thats what the play was about.

[-] NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 1 points 3 hours ago

The data source your using is not up to date tho, there was some 1.5m people crossing from Ukraine alone in the first year of Russian invasion.

I'm seeing bigger numbers now that I'm looking for up to date data so fair enough.

Im pretty sure the bodies activist kept finding in the border zone before being pushed back by millitary special zone were not bogus.

I meant bogus as in "these refugees clearly aren't the problem they're being made out to be by EU countries," not in the sense that what Belarus is doing isn't insanely evil.

I hope your concer is not just an attempt to excuse a successful attempt to destabilise our country,

I mean, what Belarus is doing here is on the same level as telling someone they kinda stink in the hopes that they commit suicide. The fact that such a thing is working/"working" (as I said above 17000 is peanuts) is more proof of underlying instability than success of the scheme.

this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2025
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