Migrant crisis in Eastern Europe: what is Belarus playing?

Audio 19:30

Migrants at the border between Belarus and Poland, November 9, 2021. via REUTERS - OBTAINED BY REUTERS

By: Clémentine Pawlotsky

1 min

After the European Union, the UN in turn hardens the tone concerning the fate of migrants stranded at the border between Belarus and Poland.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, denounces an "intolerable situation" and calls for "immediate" humanitarian access.

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About 3,000 to 4,000 people, mainly Kurds from the Middle East, have been massing for several days in a wooded area on the eastern border of the European Union, under freezing temperatures and facing a large Polish device intended to stop them . Europeans have accused Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko for weeks of fueling tensions by issuing visas to these migrants and sending them to the border, in revenge for the European sanctions adopted against his country. So what is Belarus playing? Is Alexander Lukashenko's regime really using these migrants to destabilize Poland and, more broadly, the European Union?

A Decryption with 

, Secretary General of the Center for Political Research of Sciences Po (CEVIPOF) and co-founder of the geopolitics site Eurasia prospective.

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• Belarus

• Alexander Lukashenko

• Immigration

• Poland

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