Merkel asks Putin to intervene with Belarus on migrants
The German Chancellor Angela Merkel asked the Russian president Vladimir Putin from intervene with Belarus on the situation of migrants at the border of that country with Poland. The Chancellor’s office said Merkel spoke on the phone with Putin and stressed that “the exploitation of migrants against the European Union by the Belarusian regime is inhumane and completely unacceptableHe asked the Russian president to exert his influence on the regime Minsk.
Russia is a close ally of the government in Belarus. Germany is a prime destination for migrants arriving in the European Union. The reading of the appeal released by the Kremlin states that Putin “proposed to set up a discussion of the problems that arose in the direct contacts of the representatives of the EU Member States with Minsk“He also said that Put and Merkel” continued to continue the conversation on the issue. “
Polish authorities said groups of migrants tried to enter Poland from neighboring Belarus. Meanwhile, an EU leader was expected in Warsaw to support the EU member country facing migratory pressure and a humanitarian crisis on a border that also forms the EU’s eastern border. The Polish Ministry of Defense and local police reported that multiple groups of migrants tried to enter the country between late Tuesday and early Wednesday., but all the people who did it were arrested.
Hundreds of migrants have camped on the Belarusian side of the border since Monday, near the village of Kuznica. The Polish Ministry of Defense also accused Belarusian forces of shooting in the air in a border area where migrants captured between neighboring countries have set up a makeshift camp. The ministry posted a video on Twitter with sounds of what sounded like gunshots.
For months there has been a strong migration of people from the Middle East seeking to enter Poland, Lithuania and, to a lesser extent, in Latvia, all located on the eastern border of the EU. EU leaders accuse the regime of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of opening a new migration route to Europe to create instability in retaliation for the sanctions imposed by the blockade on the authoritarian Lukashenko government.
The EU has imposed sanctions for a brutal crackdown on dissent indoor following the disputed election of Lukashenko to the sixth term in August 2020. Trapped in the bitter political stalemate have been thousands of migrants, some of them families with children, who have been pushed back and forth in a wooded area of swamps and peat bogs. Eight deaths have already been confirmed, but the situation becomes more deadly as temperatures drop below freezing overnight.