The dispute over migrants who want to enter the EU illegally from Belarus has now also brought international institutions to the scene.

The focus of events is currently the Polish village of Usnarz Górny;

A group of around 30 people, who apparently come from Afghanistan or Iraq, is waiting at the previously barely fortified border in a wooded area.

At this point you want to cross the EU's external border and apply for asylum.

However, the Polish border guards have cordoned off the border and will not let anyone through.

To the east of the temporary camp in the open air are uniformed men from Belarus, so that the migrants can neither go back nor forwards and are apparently cut off from all supplies.

Gerhard Gnauck

Political correspondent for Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania based in Warsaw.

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Thomas Gutschker

Political correspondent for the European Union, NATO and the Benelux countries based in Brussels.

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Around 4,100 migrants had crossed the green border into Lithuania since June. According to the Lithuanian border guards, they came from around forty Asian and African countries; about half were Iraqis. The dictator of Belarus, Alexandr Lukashenko, had threatened several times since the spring that “migrants and drugs” would pave the way to the EU and even “not stop” armed Muslims. Lithuania took drastic measures: the state of emergency was imposed, the asylum procedure shortened and the installation of rolls of barbed wire along the border began. The EU border guards from Frontex are also on duty.

Since then, more migrants have been turned back.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told the Warsaw newspaper Rzeczpospolita on Thursday that the alliance would send a group of experts to Lithuania's eastern border because of the “use of migrants as an instrument of a hybrid attack”.

The fact that on September 10, Russia and Belarus will begin the major Sapad-2021 exercise in the region adds to the concern.

Issue in Poland

In the meantime, the events have spread to the borders with Poland and Latvia. According to the border guards, 2,900 attempted border crossings were found in Poland between August 1 and 25; 2000 of them could therefore be "prevented", 900 people were detained in facilities of the border protection. In Poland, dealing with migrants has become the most controversial topic: first activists, then left-wing and liberal MPs and two priests tried to pass the camping migrants food and sleeping bags through the trellis of the Polish border troops and to enable them to contact lawyers. Warsaw eventually provided humanitarian aid, but stressed that the migrants were located east of the border, so the Belarusian authorities would have to pass the aid on. At the same time, Warsaw has startedTo erect a two and a half meter high metal fence on the 418 kilometer long border with Belarus.

On Wednesday, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) rejected urgent requests by migrants for admission to Poland with an injunction. He only decreed that the two EU states had to provide them with food, medical help and, "if possible, temporary accommodation". The court explicitly emphasized that Poland and Latvia have the right to “control the entry, residence and expulsion of foreigners”. The UNHCR had previously asked Poland to let in the migrants.

The EU Commission is looking for a solution in the background, also in contact with the UNHCR.

So far she has not criticized either of the two Member States.

"We strictly reject attempts to instrumentalize people for political purposes," said a spokesman for Belarus.

He stated that the border of the Schengen area should be protected.

This is expressly stated in the Borders Code;

Entry, and thus applications for asylum, must generally be submitted at the official border crossings.

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But the spokesman also recalled the migrants' right to "effective access to an asylum procedure".

In this case, the question arises as to whether Belarus would not be responsible for this first, which as a rule allows migrants to enter the country on tourist visas before smuggling them to the border crossings.