On Sunday, more Polish units lined up at the Polish-Belarus border. According to the Polish Ministry of Defense, approximately 2,000 soldiers and police officers are assisting the border guards. Until the construction of the fence is completed, it is essential that soldiers be present at all times. According to the border guards, more than 60 illegal immigrants tried to enter Poland and the European Union again within 24 hours hirado.hu.
The crisis began months ago in the Baltic states, when observers said that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko released illegal immigrants to Latvia and Lithuania in response to European Union sanctions imposed on his country. Since then, the two countries have started building a fence along the Belarusian border to limit the flow of migrants, especially from Iraq and Syria.
Meanwhile, Poland has already become another EU center for asylum seekers. In August alone, nearly two thousand people tried to enter the country illegally. On Monday, the Warsaw leadership announced that it would build a fence on the border with Belarus.
“We chose a building that was built on the Hungarian-Serbian border a few years ago. Defense Minister Mariusz Blaschak announced that we will start building the fence plan on the Polish-Belarus border this week.”
Soldiers have already begun building a 2.5-meter-high fence with razor wire that will stretch 180 kilometers along the Polish-Belarus border. However, Poland and the Baltic states have already declared that the protection of external borders is not only the responsibility of individual member states, but also the responsibility of the European Union as a whole.
Cover photo: Dominika Zarzycka / NurPhoto via Getty Images
