“This week, work will begin on the construction of a fence on the Polish-Belarusian border; it will be made of barbed wire and will be 2.5 meters high,” Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Błaszczak said on Monday.
He made the announcement as he was visiting the site of an ongoing migration crisis which Poland and the Baltic states say has been planned organized by Belarus in retaliation for EU sanctions.
“We are dealing with a hybrid war, and an attack on Poland. This is an attempt to create a migration crisis,” Błaszczak said, and added that the country would soon step up the number of soldiers on the border to 2,000.
The prime ministers of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia said on Monday that the ongoing migrant crisis on the EU's border with Belarus "has been planned and systemically organized by the regime of Alexander Lukashenko."
The joint statement by Poland's Mateusz Morawiecki, Lithuania's Ingrida Šimonytė, Latvia's Arturs Krišjānis Kariņš and Estonia's Kaja Kallas was released after Poland and the Baltic states last week accused Lukashenko's regime of intentionally pushing thousands of migrants over the EU's eastern border.
Poland has offered humanitarian aid to a group of migrants stuck at the border for more than two weeks, the foreign ministry in Warsaw said on Monday.
(jh/gs)
Source: PAP