Immigration is a major issue in the general elections in several European countries (Reuters)

The British newspaper The Telegraph said that the Kremlin has influence on a number of main routes leading to the European continent, which prompted border police to warn that with the advent of spring, Russia is likely to “intensify” its efforts to facilitate the arrival of migrants to Europe.

Writer Hayley Dixon stated that there are widespread fears that Russian President Vladimir Putin is using this tactic to destabilize Europe, and she said that the Telegraph newspaper had seen intelligence documents detailing plans by Russian agents to create a “strong border police force of 15,000 men” that includes former militias. In Libya to control the flow of irregular migrants.

It quoted a security source as saying: “If you can control the routes of migrants to Europe, you can effectively control the elections, because you can restrict a certain area or flood it with migrants in order to influence public opinion at a crucial time.”

This comes at a time when immigration is a major issue in the general elections in several European countries.

The failure to control the number of migrants coming to the UK, for example, is already seen as a major weakness for current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

European concerns

According to the Telegraph, 52,530 irregular migrants were recorded entering the United Kingdom until June 2023, an increase of 17% over the previous year, most of whom crossed the canal in small boats.

Dixon warned that the rise in the number of migrants to Europe this winter “on Putin’s orders” - as she put it - will likely lead to an increase in the number of small boats crossing this summer, as human smugglers take advantage of the improving weather to send migrants across the canal, which puts Sunak under pressure. More pressure.

The European Union's border police, Frontex, says it saw Russia using migration "as a tool in a larger game of influence and pressure."

The agency warned that Putin's increasingly choosing to transport migrants to Europe - whether along Russia's eastern borders or through other regions, including Africa - poses a major threat to security in 2024.

The Telegraph report stated that those loyal to Russia - including the Wagner Group - are increasing the momentum of irregular migration by increasing instability and violence in parts of Africa under their control, and even by actually transporting migrants to the border and supporting smugglers.

The writer quoted Robert Jenrick, the former Immigration Minister, as saying, “The United Kingdom’s adversaries are using the flow of people in nearby European countries as a weapon, as we witnessed on the border between Belarus, Poland, and Lithuania in 2021.”

Warnings

The writer emphasized that officials across Europe have warned of these obstacles.

Antonio Tajani, Italy's deputy prime minister, said Rome had intelligence that the mercenaries were "very active and in contact with trafficking gangs and militias interested in smuggling migrants."

His government blamed the increase in the number of migrants crossing the Mediterranean on the Wagner Group.

The author pointed out that the largest increase in the number of migrants over the past year was across the Mediterranean, according to Frontex, which indicated that the number of irregular border crossings reached 380,000 in 2023 and was at its highest levels since 2016.

The Telegraph quoted Dr. Sergey Sokankin, a senior researcher at the Jamestown Foundation and a consultant at Gulf State Analytics in Washington, as saying that observers tend to focus on the role of Russian paramilitary forces in supporting African regimes, and not on influencing migration.

But for his part, he stresses that irregular migration routes cannot be separated from the areas and places where the Wagner Group and other Russian paramilitary forces are located.

In its latest risk report, Frontex warned that given the extent of hostility between Russia and the West and the decline in interconnectedness between them, the possibility of exploitation of migrants by Russia and Belarus has increased.

More importantly, the exploitation of migrants may not be limited to the eastern land borders only, but “Russia’s allies and agents in the south and southeast can be taken advantage of,” she said.

She added that the European Parliament is working on approving a “measure for emergency migration and asylum management” to deal with the “extremely worrying phenomenon” of “the increasing role of state actors in artificially creating and facilitating irregular migration, using migration flows for political purposes.”

Source: Telegraph