Belarus: Lukashenko provokes Europe on the Polish border
Audio 03:13
Caught between Belarus and Poland, more than 2,000 migrants have been stuck for several days in a makeshift camp on the border between the two countries.
© AP / Ramil Nasibulin
By: Bruno Daroux Follow
3 min
A diplomatic and humanitarian crisis is playing out at the moment on the border between Belarus and Poland.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is accused of instrumentalizing thousands of migrants by pushing them to reach the European Union via Poland, which refuses to welcome them, fearing to create a draft.
How can Europeans get out of this trap?
Advertising
The answer to this question is not easy.
Alexander Lukashenko knows very well what he is doing - and he knows that he can count on the support of Russia: by bringing to his home by charters from Damascus, Beirut or Tripoli, hundreds of migrants, the dictator Belarusian indulges in a calculation of total cynicism.
He dangles these men and women who dream of a better elsewhere and a better future with the possibility of a stopover in their country before being able to reach the European Union, and in the first place Poland.
He even pushes them, often under duress, towards the Polish border.
And this is where these unfortunate people find themselves confronted with the harsh reality of this European Union which they think is soft and welcoming.
They find themselves facing thousands of Polish soldiers and border guards who deny them access to European territory.
Lukashenko's strategy to castigate the European Union
So there are these terrible images of men, women and children stuck at the border on the Belarusian side who try to cross to the other side, are prevented from doing so and subsist in terrible and worsening weather conditions - there are already deaths from the cold.
This is the trap of the Belarusian president: these images which pass in loop of hungry and frozen migrants allow him to denounce the inhumanity of this rich and democratic Europe, which gives lessons of morality and virtue to the whole earth, including the fragile political existence rests on values of respect for the human being and which in fact, behaves like a besieged fortress.
A Russian solution?
There is a hiatus for the moment impossible to resolve between the humanitarian crisis and the need for Europe to hold firm on its borders, if it is to be respected as a responsible and autonomous political entity.
Lukashenko knows this very well.
Europeans too.
They know that this taking of hundreds of migrants hostage by the Minsk regime is a response to the sanctions decreed by the European Union following the terrible repression suffered by the Belarusian opposition.
They also know that they cannot let migrants freeze to death, but that they still have not succeeded in defining a common migration policy.
The equation is therefore complex: if Europe, in this case Poland, opens the doors to its territory, this will create a call for air for thousands of migrants.
He must therefore stand firm, without denying himself.
No doubt by offering targeted humanitarian aid.
By asking Moscow to roll back its Belarusian counterpart.
And by substantially strengthening the sanctions against the regime and personalities close to Alexander Lukashenko.
This threatened to cut off the gas supply to Europe, but was reframed this time by Vladimir Putin, who plays a murky role in this affair.
Newsletter
Receive all international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
European Union
Belarus
Alexander Lukashenko
Russia
Vladimir Poutine