Gov’t mulls state of emergency in regions bordering Belarus - Interior Minister
That’s according to Interior Minister Denis Monastyrskyi who spoke at a briefing on November 14, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.
"Various scenarios have been worked out, up to declaring a state of emergency in the border regions," the minister said.
According to Monastyrskyi, the government's priority for the next two years is to strengthen the state border with Belarus. He added that the 2022 budget will provide the appropriate funds to this end.
The minister noted that temporary fortifications would also be built at the border in locations where migrants could amass.
As Ukrinform reported earlier, on November 14, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Oleksiy Danilov, on the instruction of President Volodymyr Zelensky, chaired a meeting on additional measures to ensure national interests in the field of state border protection.
The migration crisis on the Belarus border with Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia has been going on since August. The said three countries have accused Belarus of manufacturing migratory pressure as part of hostile hybrid actions targeting them as EU member states.
This week, large groups of migrants attempted to penetrate the border from Belarus and into Poland, while some were returned to the borderline by Polish border guards.
Nearly 20,000 Polish military, border guards, and police forces have been deployed to the border with Belarus. On Sunday, November 14, Poland’s border guards spotted preparations by the Belarusian side to assist the illegal migrants in breaking through the border. Migrants have set up a tent camp in the immediate vicinity of the borderline, receiving from the Belarusian security forces instructions, equipment, and pepper spray.
Poland plans to build by the middle of next year a 5-meter fence m on the border with Belarus.
Ukraine is also strengthening its borderline with Belarus, deploying an additional 8,500 troops in the border areas.
According to the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, nearly 15,000 potential illegal migrants have arrived in Belarus.
According to various international media reports, migrants have been arriving in the country in an organized manner, on passenger flights from the Middle East, having been provided short-term visas, before being helped by Belarusian government to get to the areas bordering the EU.
According to a Polish analyst and expert on foreign relations Dariusz Materniak, it’s Russia’s secret services that are managing the migration crisis at the European Union's borders, using a strategy similar to the one they applied in Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014, while the Lukashenko regime is simply executing the task on the ground.
He stated that Moscow has maintained it is not involved in the migration crisis in Belarus. "But we have received information from Belarus-based journalists and people who work in NGOs that are in opposition to Lukashenko, who say that Russian security operatives, in particular those with the FSB, have been deployed in the areas bordering with Poland and Lithuania, and that they have been handling the said processes. Today, Belarus is not the country that is able to lead own foreign or domestic policy on its own," the analyst said.
im
