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22-year-old Christina flicks her thumb over the screen of her mobile.

She is leaning on a car in front of the church of San Antoniego, in the center of Sokolka, in Poland, with two friends.

Every now and then he shows them his phone

.

"Look, this is very handsome."

"This one reminds me of an actor."

"I would like to meet him."

Almost all the boys who appear in their search for Tinder have one thing in common: they

wear the uniform of the Polish army and are deployed on the border

, only five kilometers from where they are.

Although he likes some more than others, all carry the icon of the pulsed heart.

And there are many.

- Are you looking for a date with a boy from the army?

- No, but I want

you to know that I am very grateful for your work. They have defended our border

.

For most of the teenagers and young people in the area, Sokolka is a place that does not offer many possibilities. There are few bars to go out and meet, the winter cold is freezing and the community is conservative and religious. Those who can afford it end up going to study in Warsaw,

where no one knows anyone and the chances of having a good time for a twenty-something are multiplied

. But we were in Sokolka with the blonde Christina, her Tinder app, and her friends. "Here we always see the same boys, they are few and we know them. But I like that others come from outside.

I hope these soldiers are here a long time and let them leave

."

Christina is referring to the permissions.

For now, due to the tension on the border and the deployment of the army, the soldiers have not had a respite.

They are sleeping in industrial buildings and maintain a demanding rotation

.

None of them have been seen around here, according to Christina and her friends.

When this is over, they will return to their barracks.

The new Cold War will remain very cold in Sokolka.

Rejection to the other side

The same situation, but in reverse, happens on the other side of the border. In the Belarusian city of Grozno, according to the British

Daily Mail

, the users of Tinder who were looking for boys suddenly find

thousands of profiles detected on their radar that were not there before: the same Polish soldiers

. Most are rejected with an "X" for the same reason that Poles choose them by beating their hearts. It also happens, with few differences, on the border with Lithuania, whose army is also deployed on the Belarusian dividing line.

With the return of the immigrants to Minsk from their makeshift camp at the Kuznica border crossing,

calm returns to the area and international televisions pack their cameras to return

. The few hotels in the city, which are full these days, are gradually being emptied. "That Tinder account is normal," says the owner of a store that serves take-out coffees to reporters. "Throughout the country you will find a wave of patriotism and nationalism that these days has increased because of Lukashenko.

Soldiers are heroes for everyone and the government party is very happy,

" says this Pole. What about the immigrants who wanted to get here? "That I am very sorry. That they have been deceived and that someone should pay for it."

Nobody here trusts the good intentions of the Belarusian dictator and his promises to repatriate the immigrants that his own regime pushed to the border.

Local activists search, as far as the army leaves them,

for people who did manage to overcome the border wall and who remain in the forests, either dead or alive

.

These associations

track abandoned clothes, children's toys or food scraps

to find those who, for fear of being detained and returned, have not yet come out of the shadows.

It is not easy.

The police and the military have created a three-kilometer-wide exclusion zone and block any attempt to access it, even if it is to search for people who died of hunger and cold and whose phones were left without a battery and no signal.

Christina closes Tinder after gifting a bunch of hearts to the "boys in uniform," as she calls them,

although she knows she may never come across them

.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • Poland

  • Belarus

  • HBPR

Europe Immigrants trapped on Europe's border: the keys to the? Hybrid war?

between Belarus and Poland

EuropeRussia and Belarus unite to make the European Union give in to blackmail at its border

Europe Increases pressure for Brussels to finance border walls to curb migration

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