The Polish government announced Monday that it would redeploy a no-access buffer zone on part of its border with Belarus on Thursday to deter intensifying migrant smuggling. Warsaw accuses Moscow and Minsk of orchestrating the influx of African migrants via Belarus to Poland, a country bordering the European Union. The objective is “to make it more difficult for illegal migrants to cross the Polish-Belarusian border and to create better operating conditions for border guards, the army and the police” deployed on site, Prime Minister Donald Tusk told journalists.
“Basically, the zone will extend (…) over two sections where we have the greatest number of passages (…), over around sixty kilometers”said Deputy Interior Minister Czslaw Mroczek. “For about 45 kilometers it will be an area about 200 meters deep. On the part which crosses nature reserves, the large forest (of Białowieża), the area will be a little deeper, but will not exceed two kilometers., he added to the TVN24 channel. On more than 186 kilometers of the Polish-Belarusian border, Poland built a 5.5 meter high metal barrier in 2022, crowned with concertina to stop migrants.
Three kilometers of buffer zone
In 2021, the previous nationalist government established a buffer zone approximately three kilometers wide and long across the entire border, prohibited to any non-resident person, including humanitarian NGOs and journalists, which has since been lifted. Neither this barrier nor the riverine, marshy or forest areas have been able to stop the flow of migrants accused of sometimes exhibiting aggressive behavior. On Thursday a Polish soldier was stabbed to death by an unknown person through the barrier.
In May, Polish soldiers fired more than 700 warning shots aimed at migrants, the Polish Defense Ministry said last week. Many humanitarian organizations accuse Poland of continuing the illegal practice of pushbacks. According to Polish border guards, more than 17,000 attempts to illegally cross the Belarusian border have been detected since the start of the year. Last month, Warsaw announced that it wanted to spend more than 2.3 billion euros to strengthen this border, used, according to it, by Russia to destabilize the region through hybrid attacks. According to Warsaw, more than 90% of people who try to cross this border illegally have Russian visas.
