Up-to-Date Information on the Situation on the Polish-Belarusian Border

The situation on the Polish-Belarusian border, provoked by the regime of Alexander Lukashenko in order to destabilize the European Union, remains tense and continues to change dynamically.

There are provocations every day. Polish border guards are being attacked by migrants backed by Belarusian services. Every day, there are about 100 attempts to cross the border illegally. This number may increase rapidly, as the Belarusian logistics center near the border with Poland houses 1,000 refugees (including 150 children) serve as an unspoken threat to a new escalation of the situation.

From the beginning of the year until December 12, the Polish Border Police registered 38,796 attempts to cross the Polish-Belarusian border illegally. 33,208 of them were prevented. For comparison, in the whole of 2020 only 88 attempts were registered.

In the period December 6-12, the Border Police registered 570 attempts to cross the Polish-Belarusian border illegally. A week earlier, they were 501. Since last week, the number of attempts has decreased significantly and is comparable to that of early August this year.

Last week, FRONTEX released statistics on the EU's eastern border. The European Agency announced that this year the number of cases of illegal border crossing is almost 8,000, ie. thirteen times more than in 2020 and almost twelve times more than in the same period in 2019. Most people who tried to cross this route in 2021 were citizens of Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.

Poland is assisted by troops from Britain and Estonia in guarding the EU's external border with Belarus. Construction of a border facility will soon begin, aimed at protecting the Polish-EU border and curbing illegal migration.

The situation on the Polish-Belarusian border was discussed on December 16th at a summit of EU heads of state and government. European leaders noted the adoption (December 13th) of the fifth tranche of sanctions against Belarus, and condemned the Lukashenko regime's instrumentalization of migrants. They drew attention to the EU's financial support for strengthening the security of the border with Belarus, and stressed the need to adopt legal instruments in support of countries at risk of hybrid attacks using migrants.

Up-to-date information on the situation on the Polish-Belarusian border, as well as photos and videos for download, can be found (in English) on the website https://www.gov.pl/web/border

Information is up to 17 of December 2021

/Embassy of Poland in Bulgaria

We need your support so Novinite.com can keep delivering news and information about Bulgaria! Thank you!