Next week, the mercury will drop to almost zero degrees Celsius at night; rains are also forecast. Winter is coming and migrants are trapped in the open, caught in a geopolitical storm that shows no signs of abating.
There are about 200 children and 600 women along the Bruzgi-Kuznica border crossing, which separates Belarus from Poland, Belarus border officials told CNN on Friday. Some of them are just babies or small children.
Migrants, most of whom come from the Middle East and Asia, are looking to move illegally to Poland and from there to other European countries, especially Germany, in search of a better life.
“I’m hungry, I’m hungry,” cried an English girl
A few lucky ones have small tents. Most are trying to sleep in makeshift shelters of branches and bushes, stranded on the border between Belarus and Poland, in the biggest humanitarian disaster on the EU border in recent years, where thousands of people are literally fighting for a piece of bread.
“I’m hungry, I’m hungry,” a child shouted at CNN reporters. Thousands of migrants who want to force their way into Polish territory have become prisoners between the troops of the two countries. In front of them, the Poles are not going to give up, and from behind they are pressing Lukashenko’s troops.
The Belarusian Red Cross delivers food and water, but migrants who spoke to CNN said deliveries were insufficient and uncertain. It is barely enough to keep those who are already here alive, and Belarusian state border officials have estimated that the number of people in the border region will rise to 5,000 in a week.
Western leaders accuse Belarus of causing a crisis of immigrants at the eastern border of the European Union as punishment for sanctions for human rights violations
The government of President Alexander Lukashenko has repeatedly denied such allegations, instead blaming the West and accusing it of ill-treating migrants.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has been accused of orchestrating the migrant crisis at the EU’s eastern border in retaliation for Brussels’ sanctions on his regime. Lukashenko allegedly authorized people from crisis or conflict areas to come to Minsk by plane and then redirect them to EU member states on the border with Belarus.
A Kurdish migrant told CNN that he paid $ 2,000 for the trip from Iraq to Belarus. “We want to get to Germany,” he said.
President Vladimir Putin said in an interview broadcast on Russia-1 on Sunday that Russia is “ready to help in any way possible if, of course, something depends on us here,” the state news agency TASS reported.
Polish border police on Sunday accused Belarusian security forces of instructing migrants stranded in the area to storm the border between the two countries. Under the current law on the state of emergency in the border area, Poland states that anyone entering the country illegally must leave its territory. Under the law, Warsaw has restricted civil rights and banned demonstrations in the area, CNN reports.
