63
“If a colonel couldn’t do anything, what could I do?”: A Belarusian border guard’s confession on how Belarus and Russia deliberately sparked a refugees crisis in Europe (lemmy.sdf.org)
submitted 1 year ago by Hotznplotzn@lemmy.sdf.org to c/europe@feddit.org
39 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Archived

In the second half of 2021, a systematic effort by the Belarusian government created a crisis on the EU’s eastern border: the authorities in Minsk began bringing would-be migrants into Belarus, then transporting them to the frontier with Poland and the Baltic states. Although Russia’s subsequent full-scale invasion of Ukraine drew attention away from the manufactured problem, the situation has only gotten worse. In 2024 alone, 17,000 people entered the EU illegally through Belarus — three times more than in the year before.

Refugees are undeterred by the physical obstacles — metal fences topped with barbed wire — which Lithuania and Poland erected in 2022 (with Latvia planning to finish its own by the end of this year). Numerous accounts have been collected showing that Belarusian border guards themselves transported migrants all the way up to the barriers, and when a similar crisis broke out on the Russian-Finnish border in 2023,

[...]

Russia’s FSB had played the leading role in creating that copycat scheme. Now, a former Belarusian border guard tells [...] how he escorted migrants to the border, while an Iranian refugee described how he managed to cross into the EU in 2023 with the help of the Belarusian authorities.

We were bound by a separate set of instructions signed by Alexander Lukashenko. For instance, it said that upon spotting a suspicious person in the border zone, we had to fire two warning shots into the air and a third directly at the person. -- A former conscript of the Belarusian Border Service.

The officers started shouting slogans about Lithuanian enemies and instructing us on how we would move migrants across the border into Lithuania. -- A former conscript of the Belarusian Border Service.

They [the Belarusian border guards] warned us: if you go back to Belarus, they’ll beat you up. --* M., an Iranian refugee*

[...]

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] ddplf@szmer.info -2 points 1 year ago

So that's the number of people that managed to cross the border. Not the number of people that attempted to after they were transported to the border area by the Belarussian government.

This is a significant manipulation and you should be ashamed, especially when you consider how aggressive and dangerous these people are to Polish soldiers that I know personally, as I live in Eastern Poland.

[-] Saleh@feddit.org 6 points 1 year ago

So even if it was 170,000 that would amount to 0,4% of the Polish population and then there is Germany, France and other high population EU countries that could have easily helped house and process the people. Not making it a crisis would have long stopped the procedure alltogether, but Poland wanted to make it a crisis for reasons of Racism. By doing so Poland is working together with Russian and Belarus.

People may be aggressive to the Polish soldiers, because the Polish and Belarusian soldiers are working together to abuse, torture and push the people around.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/12/10/poland-brutal-pushbacks-belarus-border
https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/trapped-pushed-back-and-tortured-polands-crackdown-refugees-europes-border

When it comes to abusing and torturing "brown people" Polish and Belarusian border agents seem to be on the same side.

So the only option people have is to push through somehow and hope that they manage to make it far enough that Poland isn't illegally deporting them back into the "death zone". There is a reasonable chance that the soldiers you know are criminals, who should face a court and likely a long if not lifelong prison sentence. But when it comes to crimes against humanity at the borders, the EU is enabling such criminal practices. Again this is serving the interests of Putin and Lukashenko.

load more comments (19 replies)
load more comments (225 replies)
this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2025
63 points (95.7% liked)

Europe

12318 readers
486 users here now

News and information from Europe 🇪🇺

(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)

Rules

  1. This is an English-language community. Comments should be in English. Posts can link to non-English news sources when providing a full-text translation in the post description. Automated translations are fine, as long as they don't overly distort the content.
  2. No links to misinformation or commercial advertising. When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title. Infographics must include a source and a year of creation; if possible, also provide a link to the source.
  3. Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. Don't post direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments. Don't troll nor incite hatred. Don't look for novel argumentation strategies at Wikipedia's List of fallacies.
  4. No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism. We follow German law; don't question the statehood of Israel.
  5. Be the signal, not the noise: Strive to post insightful comments. Add "/s" when you're being sarcastic (and don't use it to break rule no. 3).
  6. If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
  7. Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in other communities.
  8. Don't evade bans. If we notice ban evasion, that will result in a permanent ban for all the accounts we can associate with you.
  9. No posts linking to speculative reporting about ongoing events with unclear backgrounds. Please wait at least 12 hours. (E.g., do not post breathless reporting on an ongoing terror attack.)
  10. Always provide context with posts: Don't post uncontextualized images or videos, and don't start discussions without giving some context first.

(This list may get expanded as necessary.)

Posts that link to the following sources will be removed

Unless they're the only sources, please also avoid The Sun, Daily Mail, any "thinktank" type organization, and non-Lemmy social media (incl. Substack). Don't link to Twitter directly, instead use xcancel.com. For Reddit, use old:reddit:com

(Lists may get expanded as necessary.)

Ban lengths, etc.

We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.

If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 7 or 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.

If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the admin that applied the rule (check modlog first to find who was it.)

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
federalreverse@feddit.org
poVoq@slrpnk.net
anzo@programming.dev
EuroMod@feddit.org