Alexander Lukashenko, the dictator of Belarus ordered military planes to force a Ryanair flight carrying opposition blogger Raman Pratasevich to land in Minsk in May 2021. A month after the EU retaliated with a set of sanctions, Lukashenko retaliated by declaring that Belarus would stop attempting to stop the flow of migrants and drugs across its EU border. He was doing more than that, according to the documents. Belarusian authorities enabled migrants’ attempts to fly into the country and enter the European Union illegally – this was proven by plenty of recorded phone conversations and documents and interviews with current and former security force personnel conducted by POLITICO.
How Belarus is Using Migration?
The goal of the hybrid warfare program was to sow political division among EU nations. It started in the spring of 2021 when the bloc sanctioned the nation for suppressing dissent after a rigged election that awarded Alexander Lukashenko, the country’s dictator, a sixth term in office.
Communications between Belarusian security forces and hotels and travel agencies under state control are included in the documents. They describe an ongoing attempt to turn migration into a weapon.
According to the rights organization Human Constanta, at least 120 people have lost their lives along Belarus’s border with Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia since the program’s inception. Border guards from Poland and the EU have been charged with forcibly renouncing migrants. In an effort to block the migration route, Warsaw intends to seal off its whole border with Belarus this summer. There were advertisements for Belarusian tours in places like Iraq. Following responses from prospective migrants, the travel agencies petitioned the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for temporary visas.
Application forms and passport records obtained by POLITICO showed that the stated purposes varied from business travel to tourism, hunting, and medical care, frequently involving group visas. Many migrants, however, claimed that they were unofficially promised a simple route into the EU.
Travelers flew to Belarus on airlines such as Fly Baghdad, Iraqi Airways, and Belarusia’s state-run Belavia after paying between $6,000 and $15,000 for the package. Upon arrival, they were given visas, met by representatives of the company, and shown to hotels run by the Presidential Property Management Directorate, a government agency that answers directly to Lukashenko.
In an intercepted phone call, Dzmitry Korabau, deputy head of Oskartour, a private tour company that participated in the scheme, said that people had arrived in Minsk “without bags.” “The planes flying back to their home countries are half empty,” he joked. In another call, he said that when people “run away, they ditch all their documents so they can’t be identified.” The scheme ran smoothly until June 2021, when independent Belarusian and Western media began reporting on the large numbers of foreigners seen in the streets, cafes, and shopping centers, and linking their arrivals to Tsentrkurort, the state tour company named in the visa applications, which is owned by the Presidential Property Management Directorate.
Number of Incidents on the Polish-Belarus Border
For almost four years, Poland has been on a permanent state of high alert because of its neighbour, Belarus, which stands accused of luring asylum seekers from far-away destitute nations and pushing them en masse towards the border with the purpose of sowing chaos and polarising Polish society. Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski also claimed in an interview that 90 percent of people recently detained while trying to cross the border have Russian visas and are being sent from Moscow via Minsk to destabilise the European Union.
According to data from the Podlaskie Border Guard Branch, over 13 thousand illegal border crossings from Belarus to Poland have occurred on the border section in this region just until the 31st of May 2024. Only a few days before, a lethal incident happened: a migrant trying to cross into Poland and stabbed a Polish solider – who later died from his wounds.
Following the incident, Donald Tusk signed a regulation on July 12 that established an exclusion zone, preventing unauthorized individuals from entering within 200 meters and up to two kilometers of the Polish side of the border. In early June, the Polish Parliament gave the go-ahead for security personnel stationed along the Belarusian border, including soldiers, border guards, and police officers, to shoot anyone trying to enter the country illegally with live ammunition “preventively” or “in self-defense.” Human rights organizations also criticized the illegal pushbacks over the border, there were over 6 000 of them between July 2023 and January 2024.
Tomasz Siemoniak, the interior minister, announced on July 17 that more funds had been set aside “for the modernization of the border fence.” A 5.5-meter-high steel dam was built on the 186-kilometer border with Belarus in 2022. It is the primary means of securing this border against illegal migration. It is supplemented by the so-called electronic barrier, a network of cameras and sensors that operates at 206 kilometers in Podlaskie. The electronic barrier will also be built on the border rivers Swislocz and Istoczanka in Podlaskie. On the 47-kilometer section, there will be approximately 500 poles with a thousand day-night and thermal imaging cameras, as well as a sensor network.
The Migration Crisis Along the Eastern Border of the EU
Encouraged by Russian and Belarusian authorities, the increasing number of migrants may be an intentional attempt to place Tusk’s government in a precarious situation with few prospects for political success. The previous national-conservative PiS government in Poland came under fire for enforcing its stringent border control policies; the current coalition government cannot do anything else than follows these strict measures. However, they were in opposition they often criticized the right-wing PiS for doing the same.
On the one hand, Poland may be perceived internationally as a state that disregards or violates human rights. On the other hand, the government may come across as “soft” and disregarding national security if it loosens current regulations. Additionally, nations further west, particularly Germany, which is the migrants’ main destination, are pressuring it to stop crossings.
