Belarus migrants: Berlin calls for a halt to flights or harsh sanctions and Warsaw wants NATO consultations

• Putin: we have nothing to do with the migrant crisis in Belarus

• Crisis Belarus, Belavia flag carrier will not embark foreigners from Turkey

• Belarus, von der Leyen: EU and US sanctions are on the way

• Thousands of migrants on the border between Belarus and Poland.

  Warsaw: we fear armed escalation

• Belarus: American who participated in the assault on Congress seeks political asylum in Minsk

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November 14, 2021 "All airlines should follow the example of Turkish Airlines and others and unambiguously refuse to be involved in the smuggling operation" of Lukashenko's migrants. "Those who fail to do so will face harsh sanctions. The EU's overflight and landing rights are no longer inviolable".

Thus in a note the German Foreign Minister, Heiko Maas, on the eve of the meeting with his European counterparts in Brussels to agree on new sanctions against Minsk.

In recent days, Turkish Airlines and Belavia announced the interruption of connections to Minsk for Syrian, Iraqi and Afghan citizens.

The solution to the migrant crisis on the border between Poland and Belarus is not a wall. This was underlined by the head of EU foreign policy, Josep Borrell, in an interview with France 24. "Today there are more walls in Europe than at the time of the Berlin Wall. But migration problems will not be solved with them" Borrell said.

The EU High Representative for Foreign Policy himself had a telephone conversation with the Belarusian Foreign Minister, Vladimir Makei, on the "difficult situation of migrants on the border between Belarus and the European Union". 

"I spoke with the Foreign Minister of Belarus, Makei, to raise the issue of the precarious humanitarian situation on the border with the EU. The lives of the people must be protected and access to humanitarian agencies must be allowed. The current situation is unacceptable and must stop. People should not be used as weapons, "Borrell tweeted.

The EU sanctions against Belarus, consciously considered responsible for the migrant crisis on the border with Poland, are "hopeless" and "counterproductive". Makei said so, in an interview with Borrell.

Both interlocutors, as reported by Minsk, "agreed to keep the channels of dialogue open" and Belarus "reaffirmed its readiness in principle for an equal and mutually respectful dialogue with the European Union". 

It is the European countries themselves that have created the conditions for the influx of migrants, at the center of the ongoing crisis on the border between Belarus and the EU. This was supported by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, as reported by Ria Novosti. "They themselves are to blame: for political, military and economic reasons," said the Kremlin leader. "They themselves created the conditions because thousands and hundreds of thousands of people are forced to flee. And now they are looking for culprits to absolve themselves.

The Polish Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, evoked Article 4 of the NATO Treaty and said that Poland, Latvia and Lithuania, which border with Russia, could ask for urgent consultations on the migrant crisis. The Pap agency reports. Article 4 provides for consultations in the event of a threat to the territorial integrity, political independence or security of a member country.

A few dozen migrants from Belarus were arrested in Poland, the Warsaw police announced. It is about fifty migrants who managed to cross the closely guarded border between the two countries, with EU and NATO principals. Today, border guards report, there are even more attempts to cross the border.

Thousands of migrants from the Middle East have been camped in the cold for days waiting to enter the EU from Belarus, and this has caused a crisis in relations between Brussels, which with the US accuses the regime of Aleksandr Lukashenko of having deliberately provoked the crisis by encouraging the arrival of migrants, and Minsk, supported by Russia, which counterattacks, in turn accusing the West.

According to humanitarian organizations, there have already been at least 10 victims among the migrants amassed in the icy woods on the border between the two countries, and they evoke a foreseeable humanitarian crisis.