The crisis on the Belarusian-Polish border continues - people freeze and die every day.

And the blame for this largely lies with the Polish government, which is using this crisis for domestic and foreign policy purposes.

In recent weeks, it seemed that the migration crisis on the Belarusian-Polish border had begun to decline.

Back then, German Chancellor Angela Merkel managed to find a common language with Alexander Lukashenko, and migrants who were on the territory of Belarus began to be taken back to the Middle East.

“Here, the Belarusian authorities are doing everything that depends on them, including convincing people to voluntarily return to their places of permanent residence, to their homeland, primarily to Iraq,” says Russian President Vladimir Putin.

However, the problem is that the Polish authorities are doing everything in their power to ensure that the crisis continues and that people on the border continue to suffer.

And not just to suffer, but to suffer demonstratively.

“You can't water people not only with water, but also knead herbicides and pesticides into the water in order to cause burns there, other grave consequences for these migrants, including women and young children ... How many people have already died at the border?

They were already buried there, they are buried there almost every day ... To be honest, I am especially worried about young children there.

It is simply impossible to look calmly when you see that in winter conditions they practically have to spend the night there, on the street, ”- Vladimir Putin is indignant.

Warsaw's motives for this behavior are quite obvious.

For the Polish leadership, this is a matter of internal ratings as well as foreign policy leadership.

It would seem that the population of any civilized country will categorically disapprove of the behavior towards refugees that the Polish security forces demonstrate. Local human rights activists, liberals, religious people - and just people - had to unite and force their own authorities to behave with other people in trouble in a European, human way.

However, in Poland, the majority of the population has a different view of the situation. For them, the migration crisis (which they see as a flow of Muslims directed by Russia) has become a combination of two of the most painful fears of the Polish historical consciousness - of the Muslim invasion and of the Russian invasion. Therefore, they generally support the government's tough action to protect Polish borders. The ratings of the ruling Law and Justice party have skyrocketed, and the longer the current crisis persists, the more Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski will be perceived not as retrograde obscurantists (whose internal reforms turn Poland into a reactionary authoritarian state), but as defenders of national sovereignty.

As for foreign policy, before the migration crisis, Poland with confident steps (see transformation into a reactionary authoritarian state) was moving towards the status of a pan-European outcast.

Brussels has already imposed a number of sanctions against Warsaw and was not going to stop.

The migration crisis did from Poland what the “Skripaliada” did from Great Britain, which dragged the EU on the Brexit issue, - the pan-European outcast turned into a pan-European victim, to whose defense all EU countries should come.

Moreover, as in the case of Great Britain, Poland was even given the opportunity to lead the process of punishing the culprit, in this case Belarus. Warsaw is now trying to ride the anti-Lukashenko policy of the West and wants to play almost the main violin in determining the new packages of sanctions that will be introduced against Minsk. In this case, for, as US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken put it, the use of "innocent migrants as a political weapon" by Belarus.

It will be very easy for the Poles to play this game - after all, they are one of the loudest supporters of the most stringent sanctions, and a significant number of experts in the EU and the USA are now calling for exactly such. The West recently introduced the fifth package of sanctions, which includes a ban on operations with Belarusian sovereign debt (which is already quite painful for Minsk, since more than half of Belarusian bonds are denominated in dollars). However, the hawks demand not to stop at half measures. They want totality, up to the introduction of a complete trade embargo against Belarus, a ban on all transit traffic, a financial blockade, the collapse of the Belarusian Internet segment, etc.

Yes, there are strong voices against this approach - primarily because the extremely harsh actions of the West against Minsk will finally push Alexander Lukashenko into the arms of Moscow and force the Belarusian leader to burn bridges (for example, to visit Crimea, thereby putting an end to the issue of his recognition), which he can still go to Europe. However, the Poles are not afraid of such a prospect - moreover, it even makes some people happy. If Lukashenka goes to the East, then Poland will become a real outpost of the West to defend against the “Russian threat”. It is quite a comfortable state for the Polish elites, which is also capable of strengthening Polish-American cooperation in both political and financial matters.

That is why the Poles (they are not alone, of course) successfully neutralize the voices of those who call for restraint in relation to Lukashenka. They also neutralize it by artificially increasing the degree of conflict on the border. So, for example, according to the press secretary of the minister-coordinator of the Polish special services Stanislav Zharin, the Belarusian special services are deliberately spreading a number of rumors among migrants. Including the fact that Poland is about to open its borders.

“The actions of the Belarusian services are designed to aggravate the situation on the border with Poland.

They increase the interest of migrants in attempts to illegally attack the border line, ”says Pan Jarin, adding that the rumors are pushing migrants to attack, including on the Polish security forces protecting this border.

In addition, the Ukrainian factor is also involved in the process.

“The government has information from our Ukrainian partners that there is a scenario in which the migration route can be redirected to the territory of that country,” says Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak.

In fact, the Ukrainian partners themselves are happy to join this crisis and use it for their own benefit.

Politicize it.

In the meantime, Warsaw, Kiev and other businessmen will calculate their profits, migrants at the border will continue to freeze.

And die.

The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.