Poland accuses Belarus of staging armed cross-border intrusion
- Warsaw said on Wednesday it had summoned the Belarusian charge d’affaires to protest gun-toting people in uniform crossing into Polish territory
- Poland has imposed a state of emergency at the border following a surge in migrants trying to enter the country, and accused Belarus of ‘deliberate escalation’
Poland’s foreign ministry said unidentified uniformed individuals armed with long guns had crossed into Polish territory from Belarus on Monday night.
Polish soldiers noticed three uniformed people with long weapons, said Stanislaw Zaryn, spokesman for Poland’s security services. “After meeting a Polish patrol, they reloaded their weapons and then departed towards Belarus,” he said.
Zaryn said the incident occurred about 300 metres into Poland from the border with Belarus. “It was enough to assume that it was not a mistake,” he said.
“Deputy Foreign Minister Piotr Wawrzyk forwarded an emphatic protest … against the violation of the Polish state border, emphasising that the actions taken by the Belarusian authorities in recent weeks have the increasingly evident hallmarks of a deliberate escalation,” Warsaw’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
“[He] pointed out that Poland deems such actions unacceptable and will not tolerate them … and urged the Belarusian side to explain the incident immediately.”
There was no immediate comment from the Belarusian side.
Tuesday’s meeting was the third time in a month that Belarusian envoy Alexander Chesnovsky had been called in to answer questions about the situation at the border, where hundreds have been trying to cross illegally every day.
In recent months, thousands of migrants from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Africa have been lured to Belarus on tourist visas and encouraged to cross into Poland, Lithuania, and to a lesser extent Latvia – the three EU nations bordering Belarus.
Polish and other EU leaders have accused the government of President Alexander Lukashenko, which is backed by Moscow, of encouraging the migration as a form of hybrid warfare aimed at creating instability in the region and the EU more broadly.
In Brussels, European Commission spokesman Peter Stano said on Wednesday that territorial intrusion into Poland, if confirmed, “would be yet another provocation from the side of [the] Lukashenko regime against the European Union and its member states.”
Zaryn said that that there has been a “series of incidents and provocations organised by Belarusians, but this was the most dangerous and serious incident so far.”
He said the other incidents have involved Belarusian forces pointing guns in the air and shooting blanks when they meet Polish soldiers and guards. In other cases, Belarusian forces have destroyed a razor wire barrier on the border or encouraged migrants to do so, Zaryn said.
Additional reporting by Associated Press
