Russia flies bombers as Belarus-Poland border crisis escalates

European countries and the US condemned Belarus over a crisis that has seen hundreds of migrants trapped on its border with Poland, after an emergency meeting at the UN Security Council on the tense stand-off between Minsk and the EU. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has urged the EU to start talks with diplomatically isolated Belarus over the roughly 2,000 migrants, mainly Kurds from the Middle East, who are living in a tent camp on the border between Belarus and Poland in near-freezing temperatures. Poland is refusing to allow the migrants to cross, accusing Minsk of luring them to Belarus to send across the border in revenge for sanctions. After an emergency meeting Thursday at the UN Security Council on the crisis the US and European delegations condemned “the orchestrated instrumentalisation of human beings whose lives and well-being have been put in danger for political purposes by Belarus”. Minsk is aiming at “destabilising neighbouring countries and the European Union’s external border and diverting attention away from its own increasing human rights violations,” they said in a joint statement. The statement made no mention of Belarus ally Russia, which before the meeting rejected western allegations that it was working in conjunction with Minsk to send the migrants over the EU’s eastern border into Poland. And in his second phone call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in as many days, Putin “spoke in favour of restoring contacts between EU states and Belarus in order to resolve this problem,” the Kremlin said. US warns Europe that Russia may plan to invade Ukraine The EU has so far refused any direct contacts with Belarus’s strongman Alexander Lukashenko, who on Thursday warned that any new sanctions could see Minsk cut off natural gas transit to Europe. The bloc severed contacts with Lukashenko and imposed sanctions after a heavy crackdown on the opposition following a disputed presidential election last year. The EU was expected to decide next week to impose new sanctions on Belarus for human trafficking because of the migrant crisis. Poland has deployed 15,000 troops along its border, put up a fence topped with barbed wire and approved construction of a wall on the frontier with Belarus. In a statement released for Poland’s Independence Day on Thursday, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said his country was facing a “new kind of war” whose “ammunition is civilians”. Migrants have been trying to cross the border for months but the crisis came to a head when hundreds made a concerted effort on Monday and were pushed back by Polish border guards. They set up a camp on the border, sheltering in tents and burning wood from local forests to keep warm, blocked by Polish guards behind razor-wire. Poland warns of ‘armed’ escalation as migrants aided by Belarus try to storm border The defence ministers of the Baltic states warned that the migrant bottlenecks threaten a vast section of the bloc’s eastern flank – and could even spark a military conflict. “Large groups of people are gathered and transported to the border area, where they are then forced to cross the border illegally. This increases the possibility of provocations and serious incidents which could also spill over into the military sphere,” Kalle Laanet of Estonia, Artis Pabriks of Latvia and Arvydas Anusauskas of Lithuania wrote in a joint statement. They condemned the “deliberate escalation of the Belarusian regime’s ongoing hybrid attack”. The Russian side noted that it was important to solve the migration crisis on the basis of international humanitarian norms. On Thursday, Russia sent two nuclear-capable strategic bombers on a training mission over Belarus for a second straight day in a strong show of Moscow’s support for its ally. Vladimir Putin vows to back Belarus’ Alexander Lukashenko The Belarusian Defence Ministry said two Russian Tu-160 strategic bombers practiced bombing runs at the Ruzany firing range, located in Belarus about 60km (just over 37 miles) east of the border with Poland. As part of the joint training, Belarusian fighter jets simulated an intercept, the ministry said. Lukashenko on Thursday called the Russian bomber flights a necessary response to the tensions on the Belarus-Poland border. “Let them scream and squeak. Yes, those are nuclear-capable bombers, but we have no other choice,” the president, who has been in office since 1994, said. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov noted the thousands of troops that have been deployed on either side of the Polish-Belarusian border and said “it’s a cause for deep concern of all sober-minded people in Europe”. Agence France-Presse, Associated Press, dpa

Russia flies bombers as Belarus-Poland border crisis escalates

.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;} Neighbours of Belarus fear migrant crisis risks military clash Russia sends nuclear-capable bombers on patrol over Belarus

Neighbours of Belarus fear migrant crisis risks military clash

Russia sends nuclear-capable bombers on patrol over Belarus