INTL WATCH: Clashes as Poland Defends NATO Border Against 3,000 Migrants

Dennis Olson

Chief Curmudgeon
_______________
www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/11/08/watch-violent-clashes-polish-border-thousands-of-mid-east-migrants-besiege-nato-frontier/

WATCH: Clashes as Poland Defends NATO Border Against 3,000 Migrants
Jack Montgomery5-6 minutes 11/8/2021

Violent clashes have taken place on the frontiers of NATO and the EU as Poland defends its border with Belarus against thousands of Middle Eastern migrants driven there by Alexander Lukashenko’s regime in Minsk.

Aerial and on-the-ground footage released by the Polish authorities, government, and various official spokesmen show Polish police officers, border guards, and soldiers trying to hold back what is claimed to be thousands of migrants, some armed with wire-cutters, shovels, and axes being used to fell trees onto recently-installed protective fencing.



A picture taken on November 8th, 2021 shows migrants at the Belarusian-Polish border in the Grodno region. (Photo by LEONID SHCHEGLOV/BELTA/AFP via Getty Images)

Sebastian Kaleta, Poland’s Deputy Minister of Justice, told Breitbart London that the Polish border — which he highlighted was also the NATO and European Union border — was “under attack”.

“Our army, police, and border guard are preventing our border from being forced by a group of 3,000 migrants,” the Law and Justice Party (PiS) politician said.

“It is an action organised directly by the Belarusian regime of Lukashenko. These people want to go to Germany, but they are trying to do it illegally,” he explained.

“We are dealing with the organized destruction of border fortifications,” said Piotr Müller, a Polish member of parliament and spokesman for Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s office, revealing that there have also been “direct attacks on Polish officers of the Border Guard, police, and soldiers.”

The office of the Polish president, Andrzej Duda, said on Monday that it “expected the attacks on the border to intensify in the coming hours” and that the President himself would be cutting short a planned visit to Visegrad ally Slovakia and convening a meeting of “the heads of ministries of national defence and foreign affairs, as well as military commanders and the commander of the Border Guard” to discuss the “dynamic” situation.



A picture taken on November 8th, 2021 shows Poland’s law enforcement officers watching migrants at the Belarusian-Polish border. Poland on November 8th said hundreds of migrants in Belarus were descending on its border aiming to force their way into the EU member in what NATO slammed as a deliberate tactic by Minsk. (Photo by Leonid Shcheglov / BELTA / AFP) / Belarus OUT

Lukashenko, a quasi-Stalinist leader close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, is accused of bringing migrants to the Belarusian capital of Minsk direct from the Middle East for the express purpose of pushing them to the border of Poland, Lithuania, and, to a lesser extent, Latvia, as revenge for EU sanctions and for the countries’ sheltering of some Belarusian opposition figures and dissidents.

Footage shared by Polish government spokesman Stanisław Żaryn shows long columns of migrants snaking along the highway in Belarus en route to the Polish border, in- scenes reminiscent of the 2015-16 crisis, when hundreds of thousands of Syrians and others poured into Greece and marched through much of the Balkans and Central Europe, usually with Angela Merkel’s Germany and other generous welfare states as their end goal.

“The Lukashenko regime’s use of migrants as a hybrid tactic is unacceptable,” a NATO spokesman has said of the situation in comments reported by The Telegraph, adding that the mutual defence organisation “continues to closely monitor the situation, which is putting pressure on our Allies Lithuania, Latvia and Poland.”

View: https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1457690954241093638?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1457690954241093638%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.breitbart.com%2Feurope%2F2021%2F11%2F08%2Fwatch-violent-clashes-polish-border-thousands-of-mid-east-migrants-besiege-nato-frontier%2F


Belarus is home to a substantial Polish minority, many of them stranded in the then-Soviet Socialist Republic when Moscow redrew Poland’s borders following Hitler and Stalin’s effective joint invasion of the country in 1939.

This minority was much larger before the so-called Polish Operation of the NKVD, the Soviets’ secret police, of 1937–1938, which saw over 110,000 people with Polish ties summarily executed, and close to 30,000 sent to labour camps. Victims’ family members were deported to far-flung lands such as Kazakhstan or put into orphanages, in many cases, or left destitute following the seizure of the possessions of the deceased.

Poland’s parliament has voted through funding for a more substantial Donald Trump-style border wall to be constructed against Belarus, but is for the time being relying largely on emergency manpower and makeshift fencing to deter crossings.

Follow Jack Montgomery on Twitter: @JackBMontgomery
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Melodi

Disaster Cat
The reason is the desire by the globalists to destroy western civilization and the white race on a global scale.
The immediate reason (as we have been discussing on the Ukraine thread) is that Belarus invited these people in and even sent in planes to transfer them to Belarus from the Middle East - supposedly an "unknown airline" (translation slander laws in Europe mean they can't name it yet) was used.

Then once these people were in Belarus, having been promised a new life either in Belarus OR passage to Europe which somehow Belarus said they would arrange - they were bussed to the Polish border and then shoved over into the "no man's land" between the two countries at GUNPOINT by the Belarus troops who have also used pepper spray and tear gas to prevent them from returning to Belarus.

This has actually been going on for WEEKS, but it suddenly got worse when Belarus started seriously shoving people and then "arming" them with shovels, pickaxes, and possibly guns (that isn't certain) and basically telling them to "attack the Polish lines or if you come back here you are dead."

While the majority of "refugees" (really economic migrants) are military-aged young men, Belarus was smart and made sure to import just enough women, kids, infants, and elderly to make it look like a mixed crowd.

Belarus (and probably Russia) WANT Poland to fire on these people so they have an excuse (or Russia has an excuse) to shoot back - since "fire" will have been sent at "Belarus."

At the same time, Russia is moving huge numbers of troops and equipment back towards Ukraine - so this may be an intentional distraction that the EU can not ignore on their borders. Also, Beluras is now sending troops towards the borders of the BALTIC States.

Poland and the Baltic States place Russia would delight to have back in their "sphere of influence" and if they can't manage that, they would love to have the EU tied up in a fruitless game of whack-a-mole against "migrants."

I'm sorry but this story is more complicated than it looks and as someone living on this side of the water I don't like the temperature that is rapidly building of that water, either.
 

Melodi

Disaster Cat
This is part of a long UK Daily Mail Article the important part here is the headline and first part - if true, this means Belarus is now actively FIRING on the people THEY brought to the border and are now trying to forcibly shove into Poland.

This is very different from most of the "border" issues either in the US or the rest of Europe. Countries on the outskirts have simply "opened" their borders before and let people walk into Europe - but this is a case of Belarus flying them in from the Middle East and them using them as forced human "shields" and/or forced them to take shovels and pick axes at gun point to try and "invade" Poland.

This is an act of war, near as I can tell on the part of Belarus (backed by Russia) the world (especially Europe) is in a dark and dangerous place today, I hope this can be sorted without war but I'm not sure it will be.
Belarus soldier 'fires shots to intimidate migrant group including women and children': Poland reveals footage as images claim to show injured refugees 'beaten after they were sent to border'
  • Video taken by Polish border guards reveals Belarus soldiers firing near migrants
  • Footage captures the sound of soldier cocking rifle before gunfire rings out, as two other soldiers appear to kick and hit group before one raises his gun at them
  • Event took place Tuesday, before migrants made fresh attempt to cross border
  • Dozens attempted the crossing overnight, Poland said, with around 50 arrested by Wednesday morning with others still being sought
By CHRIS PLEASANCE and WILL STEWART IN MOSCOW FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 10:01, 10 November 2021 | UPDATED: 11:28, 10 November 2021


This is the moment Belarusian troops fired gunshots close to a terrified group of migrants at the Polish border, hours before the desperate refugees made fresh attempts to break through barbed wire fences and into the EU.

Video captured by Polish guards shows people, including women and children, lined up along a border fence on the Belarusian side before the sound of a soldier cocking and firing his rifle is heard.


Amid screams from the migrants, two more soldiers can be seen kicking and hitting them before one drops to his knee and raises his gun at them. A Polish soldier can be heard calling to his squad-mate: 'Come, we have to step back!'

Poland released the footage to rubbish claims by Belarus that it was Polish soldiers who had fired the shots, as Minsk tries to discredit its rivals in Warsaw as part of a 'hybrid attack' on the EU using migrants as a weapon.

Amid a rush of migrant crossings overnight Belarus released footage of what it claimed was four Kurdish migrants beaten bloody by guards - though video seen by MailOnline appears fake and Poland has denounced it as 'propaganda'.
 

Melodi

Disaster Cat
Gang, this is really, I mean really heating up fast - there are rumors that the Belarus guards fired over the heads ot the migrants and "into Poland" which would be an actual act of war - again a lot of Fogg going on but still this is getting very scary...

Merkel appeals to Putin to intervene in Belarus border crisis
Call comes after Polish PM said Russia was behind flow of people from Middle East to EU borders
Shcheglov/Belta/AFP/Getty Images
Andrew Roth in Moscow
Wed 10 Nov 2021 13.29 GMT

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has asked Vladimir Putin to intervene in the crisis on the Belarus-Poland border in an appeal to Minsk’s key foreign sponsor.

In a phone call, Merkel told Putin that the “use of migrants by the Belarusian regime was inhuman and unacceptable and asked [Putin] to influence the regime in Minsk”, said the chancellor’s spokesperson, Steffen Seibert.


The conversation came hours after Poland’s prime minister accused Putin of “masterminding” the crisis on Belarus’s border with the EU.

The escalating rhetoric, including claims from the Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, that Russia could join a potential conflict at the border, has underlined the role that regional alliances are playing in the standoff and ensuing humanitarian crisis.

Russia has denied any involvement and blamed Europe. The Kremlin readout of the phone call with Merkel said Putin “proposed to establish a discussion of the [current] problems in direct contacts between representatives of the EU member states and Minsk”.

It did not mention Merkel’s request that Putin intervene, or promise any action from Russia to end the crisis.

Freezing to death: the migrants left to die on the Poland-Belarus border – video
10:38
Freezing to death: the migrants left to die on the Poland-Belarus border – video

Poland and Lithuania have declared a state of emergency on their borders with Belarus, where Lukashenko has been accused of ferrying asylum seekers from the Middle East to the EU’s borders as revenge for the bloc’s criticism of his crackdown on opposition.

The arrival of more than 1,000 people, many from Iraqi Kurdistan, at the Polish border on Monday brought the crisis to a head. Polish border guards said on Wednesday that two groups of several dozen people had breached the borders overnight. They were arrested and expelled, they said. Lithuanian border guards said they had prevented 281 attempts to cross the border illegally on Tuesday.

At an extraordinary session of parliament on Tuesday evening, the Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, pointed the finger of blame for the crisis at Moscow and Putin, calling the Russian leader an “enabler” of Lukashenko.

“This attack which Lukashenko is conducting has its mastermind in Moscow. The mastermind is President Putin,” Morawiecki said in the Sejm, Poland’s lower house of parliament, which is dominated by the rightwing Law and Justice party.


Morawiecki said Putin was determined to “rebuild the Russian empire” and called the crisis at the border “a new kind of war, in which people are used as living shields”.

The remarks are the most direct accusations against Russia yet in a crisis where the Kremlin has not played an overt role. Belarusian travel agencies have issued visas and brought hundreds of people from Iraq, Syria and other countries to Minsk, from where they then travel west to try to cross the border and from Poland pass on to Germany. Many of the airlines carrying them are Belarusian or based in the Middle East.

Moscow has been an increasingly crucial ally for Belarus in the past year, backing Lukashenko after his brutal crackdown on protests and after his grounding of a Ryanair flight in May that set off a fresh round of sanctions and pushed Minsk further into isolation.

EU countries have threatened new sanctions and accused Lukashenko of “human trafficking” and “gangster-style” tactics.

On Tuesday, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said western countries including EU member states, and Nato, were the “root” of the crisis.

“They were pushing for a western-style better life and democracy the way it is interpreted by the west,” he said, referring to US-led interventions and alleged western backing for the Arab spring.

Lukashenko and Putin held a phone call to discuss the border crisis on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), a military alliance of ex-Soviet states, said it was following the crisis “very closely and with concern”.

“The migrant crisis may evolve into a great disaster for thousands of civilians, including numerous women and children,” the CSTO secretariat said in a statement. Dominated by Moscow, the group is seen as the Kremlin’s answer to Nato.

Earlier, western media reported remarks from a Nato spokesperson that the military alliance “stands ready” to provide help to end the crisis.

Reuters reported on Wednesday that the EU was close to imposing more sanctions on Belarus, targeting 30 individuals and entities including the foreign minister and the Belarusian airline Belavia, with approval likely as early as next week.

A German foreign ministry spokesperson said EU foreign ministers planned to expand sanctions at a meeting on Monday, including against third-country states providing assistance to Belarus’s trafficking plans. A “great bandwidth of measures” is being considered.

Asked whether Germany would take in migrants unilaterally, Merkel’s spokesman said the question was “irrelevant”.

A spokesperson for the German interior ministry said if Belarus did not provide humanitarian aid, then the European Union needed to do so, not just one member state.

Additional reporting by Philip Oltermann
 

Squib

Veteran Member
This is precisely the trouble with trying to drive these invaders back…

Its like herding cats...or putting toothpaste back into the tube.

If these countries would stop the migration/invasion at the border where they initially amass instead of just driving them to the most convenient neighboring nation, and if they all did this, they could stop this.

I know, I know, someone with deep pockets is funding and coordinating this crap.
 

Melodi

Disaster Cat
This is precisely the trouble with trying to drive these invaders back…

Its like herding cats...or putting toothpaste back into the tube.

If these countries would stop the migration/invasion at the border where they initially amass instead of just driving them to the most convenient neighboring nation, and if they all did this, they could stop this.

I know, I know, someone with deep pockets is funding and coordinating this crap.
This isn't normal migration, this is Belarus bringing people into their own country with flights and VISAS then shoving them at Poland using tear gas, pepper spray, and even gunfire.

Belarus WANTS the Poles to fire on the migrants because then they will fire AT Belarus and obviously Belarus (or Russia) is looking for an excuse for war.

Or at least, I can't figure out any other reasons for this behavior and using people as "human grenades" as one Polish spokesperson put it.
 

Red Baron

Paleo-Conservative
_______________
The EU has placed numerous economic sanctions against Belarus after the sham elections last year which insured a Russian friendly government stayed in place.

Those EU sanctions are being fought by Belarus by weaponizing the Middle East immigrants against EU/NATO border states.

It also serves Russian interests by distracting away from annexation efforts in Ukraine and cowering Western aligned border states as a warning against supporting Ukraine.
 

Groucho

Has No Life - Lives on TB
20 seconds on a minigun's trigger should solve the immediate problem.
It may create some longer term problems, but I suspect those problems already exist, so screw 'em all.
 

Old Gray Mare

TB Fanatic
Hypothetically, totally hypothetical..... If said invaders/human wave were Muslim - not saying they are - one thing the Polls could do would be to have female troops backed up by males. Not sure but don't they find the possibility of being killed by a woman very repugnant? Not sure if it is religious taboo as in being denied entrance into paradise after death or a cultural one?

Can you imagine the progressive liberal freakout? Their intersectionality trigger would be pegged to the max. The juxtaposition of a sexually diversified military versus the refugees?
 

Melodi

Disaster Cat
Old Grey Mare just who are you thinking of? The Migrants were brought in by Belarus and placed where they are and are pepper-sprayed, tear-gassed, and possibly shot at with live fire if they try to retreat into Belarus (who flew them into their country with VISAS from the Middle East).

These people probably are largely Muslim, with a few Kurds and others who may practice other religions (including Christianity) but I don't see how female troops would affect them.

Belarus is PUSHING them onto the Polish side, where the Poles can either shoot them or try to keep them from getting in (which is what they have been doing).

Meanwhile, it is very cold and people are starting to freeze to death - I'm sure these people would LOVE to be ANYWHERE (probably even back to the Middle East) than where they are right now - which is trapped and being used by Belarus to try to provoke a war.

Now if Polish troops FIRE on the migrants they will be firing INTO BELARUS who can then "respond" to the attack - and boom it is WWIII or at least War in Europe.

This is why the Baltic States are also panicking, and the Ukraine isn't looking much better.

I repeat again, THIS IS NOT a USUAL BORDER SITUATION, this is using human beings as weapons, people who are pretty much trapped in that situation as is Poland.
 

PrairieMoon

Veteran Member
WTH....shall we start taking bets on which front WW3 starts?

I'm getting so tired of our world being manipulated for evil intentions.
 

1911user

Veteran Member


The European Union is adopting a tougher stance toward migration in response to what officials see as a hybrid attack from a close Russian ally

Migrants gathered in Belarus near the Polish border on Wednesday. Ramil Nasibulin, press pool
Updated Nov. 11, 2021 12:47 pm ET


BERLIN—A standoff over the fate of thousands of migrants camped in the forests of Belarus trying to enter Poland has pushed the European Union to embrace steps its leaders once considered controversial: explicitly paying for fences at the EU’s frontiers and pushing back people who attempt to cross.

Before the migration crisis of 2015, when over a million asylum seekers poured into Europe at the height of the Syrian civil war, the EU traditionally deemed accepting refugees to be a humanitarian imperative. Now, amid growing popular backlash and the rise of anti-immigration political forces, that position is shifting.

In a bloc that long held itself up as a magnet for people leaving poorer or war-torn countries, tolerance is growing for previously contentious practices such as forcing immigrants back across its borders, a tactic now deployed by Polish and other eastern European member states bordering Belarus.

Europeans now regularly see social-media videos and TV news clips of migrants escorted by the military of Belarus—a dictatorship and Russia’s closest ally—toward the Polish border, with Moscow’s bombers flying above. The situation is prompting the EU to abandon a long-held principle of not officially financing barriers along the frontiers of a union that holds freedom of movement as a core value, European officials say.

The bloc’s political leadership, the European Council—which groups the heads of government—is asking its executive branch, the European Commission, to create legal arrangements to allow the EU to finance border walls and other immediate measures in response to what they said is a hybrid attack from Belarus.

“We are going to talk about physical infrastructure and the possibility of its financing. I am talking about a physical infrastructure that could better protect the EU,” said Charles Michel, president of the Council.

im-433234

Poland, Latvia and Lithuania, the three EU nations that share a border with Belarus, have requested financing for walls and fences; migrants in Belarus near Poland on Wednesday.
Photo: Belarus State Border Committee/Zuma Press

Belarus’ dictatorial ruler Alexander Lukashenko on Thursday dared Poland to seal its border and threatened to retaliate against any new EU sanctions by shutting down the transit of natural gas to Europe. He has also asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to allow Russia’s military to jointly monitor parts of Belarus’s borders.

Russia on Thursday sent two strategic bombers on patrols in Belarus’s airspace, supported by Belarussian fighter jets, Russia’s defense ministry said. The mission followed similar exercises Wednesday by Russian long-range bombers. Russian defense officials said the measures were for military security and not directed against other countries.

In the Polish capital of Warsaw, meanwhile, tens of thousands of demonstrators marched through the city center, shooting flares and pumping fists in an annual nationalist march, organized by the government, to mark Poland’s Nov. 11 independence day. A small group in the crowd burned the flag of Germany, the destination for many of the migrants camped along Poland’s east.

Legal advisors to the European Council ruled this week that the bloc is permitted to finance the construction of physical barriers along its external borders with its common budget. Poland, Latvia and Lithuania, the three EU nations that share a border with Belarus, have already requested financing for walls and fences to prevent what they say is a forced influx of irregular migrants. Lithuania alone has a nearly 700-kilometer border with Belarus.

European officials and EU diplomats said that a number of governments were still reluctant to directly fund border walls because it is politically controversial, but several noted that a majority is tilting in favor of the demands by frontier states.

im-433233

A Polish military helicopter flew near the border with Belarus on Monday.
Photo: Leonid Shcheglov/BelTA/Associated Press

That marks a profound shift from a near-decade long reluctance to pay for barriers. From 2014 to this year, the EU’s €2.4 billion border-management budget, the equivalent of $2.7 billion, contained no specific line for walls or fences. While the bloc spent lavishly on systems of border towers, infrared cameras, drones and other high tech solutions to keep out migrants, physical impediments were not specifically listed. The bloc’s €6.4 billion current border-control budget was meant to uphold that distinction: If governments wanted a fence, they were expected to pay for it themselves, although frontline nations such as Bulgaria and Greece have in the past built razor-wire fences upon receiving EU funding for border management.

That policy has faced increased pressure in recent months, since Belarus began issuing tourist visas to thousands of largely Iraqi asylum seekers hoping to enter Europe.

Poland, Lithuania and Latvia have begun fencing off their borders and declared states of emergency, locally suspending ordinary democratic freedoms in border areas now swarming with soldiers.

Instead of criticizing Poland’s right-wing government, liberal, centrist and conservative European leaders have largely expressed solidarity.

Earlier


Thousands of migrants massed at the eastern border of the European Union, some cutting razor wire and attempting to climb over fences between Belarus and Poland. Polish troops were mobilized to prevent them from crossing. Photo: Leonid Shcheglov/Zuma Press

Austria’s interior minister, Karl Nehammer, said Thursday that he supported the Polish government’s bid for EU funding to seal its border, and not doing so—and instead focusing on handling the migrants—would send an “entirely wrong signal to traffickers.”

Europe’s most prominent leaders have long sought to control immigration without pursuing blunt solutions proposed by its more right-wing governments or by the Trump administration. When Hungary first fenced its border in 2015, the Commission compared the barrier to the Berlin Wall and called for it to be torn down.

“Putting up walls and cutting oneself off will not solve the problem,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in 2017, during a visit to Mexico City, referencing former President Donald Trump’s proposal for a border wall.

Today, Germany’s Green Party, which campaigned for accepting more refugees, has called for an EU-funded campaign in the refugees’ home countries warning not to travel to Belarus.

Twelve EU governments said in an open letter last month that a physical barrier appeared to be effective border protection that served the EU, and advocated EU funding. The signees included the EU’s most nationalist governments, like Poland and Hungary, and more-liberal states, like Denmark, currently ruled by its Social Democrats.

im-433277

Russia has sent bombers on patrols in Belarus airspace recently.
Photo: Russian Defense Ministry Press Service/Associated Press

Europe’s hardline position on immigration has evolved gradually in recent years. Within weeks of the 2015 migrant crisis, the bloc’s leaders began pursuing what became a €3 billion deal with Turkey’s strongman President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. A similar deal was inked with the West African state of Niger, a counterterrorism ally criticized for jailing opposition members, to halt migrants moving through the Sahara toward Libya and across the Mediterranean.

The EU has trained a Libyan coast guard that the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights accused of bringing tens of thousands of intercepted migrants into cramped cells without basic necessities like sufficient food and medical care. In September, the bloc said it had begun to engage the Taliban government in Afghanistan to discuss both human rights and controlling migration.

In March 2020, when Mr. Erdogan wanted to renegotiate the migration deal and subsequently bussed masses of refugees toward the border with Greece, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen visited Greece to express support for its efforts. The EU granted Greece €700 million to help protect its border with Turkey.

Ms. von der Leyen at the time inspected the Greek border with Turkey, lined with razor-wire, where Greek border guards had used force to push refugees back.

“I thank Greece for being our European shield in these times,” Ms. von der Leyen said.

When the Belarus crisis started in summer, Ms. von der Leyen dispatched her home affairs commissioner, Ylva Johansson, who advocated “some kind of physical barrier.”

im-433230

Polish military vehicles headed toward the border with Belarus on Thursday.
 
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northern watch

TB Fanatic
Russia sends paratroopers to Belarus for drills near Poland
Russia has sent paratroopers to Belarus in a show of support for its ally amid the tensions over an influx of migrants on the Belarusian border with Poland
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV Associated Press
12 November 2021, 03:35

WireAP_675edafe9bab41c98b9bef03b7e1072f_16x9_992.jpg



MOSCOW -- Russia sent paratroopers to Belarus Friday in a show of support for its ally amid the tensions over an influx of migrants on the Belarusian border with Poland.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that as part of joint war games Russian paratroopers will parachute from heavylift Il-76 transport planes in Belarus’ Grodno region that borders Poland.

The Belarusian military said the exercise involving a battalion of Russian paratroopers was intended to test the readiness of the allies' rapid response forces due to an “increase of military activities near the Belarusian border."


It said that as part of the drills, which will also involve Belarusian air defense assets, helicopter gunships and other forces, troops will practice targeting enemy scouts and illegal armed formations, along with other tasks.

Earlier this week, Russia sent its nuclear-capable strategic bombers on patrol missions over Belarus for two straight days.

Russia's deputy U.N. ambassador, Dmitry Polyansky, told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York that the flights came in response to a massive build-up on the Polish-Belarusian border.

Russia has strongly supported Belarus amid a tense standoff this week as thousands of migrants and refugees, most of them from the Middle East, gathered on the Belarusian side of the border with Poland in the hope of crossing into Western Europe.

The European Union has accused Belarus’ authoritarian president, Alexander Lukashenko, of encouraging illegal border crossings as a “hybrid attack” to retaliate against EU sanctions on his government for its crackdown on domestic protests after Lukashenko’s disputed 2020 reelection.

Belarus denies the allegations but has said it will no longer stop refugees and migrants from trying to enter the EU.

The Belarusian Defense Ministry accused Poland on Thursday of an “unprecedented” military buildup on the border, saying that migration control did not warrant the concentration of 15,000 troops backed by tanks, air defense assets and other weapons.

Russia and Belarus have a union agreement envisaging close political and military ties. Lukashenko has stressed the need to boost military cooperation in the face of what he has described as aggressive actions by NATO allies.

Russia sends paratroopers to Belarus for drills near Poland - ABC News (go.com)
 

TorahTips

Membership Revoked
Geography refresher... I needed it.


1. Fighting breaks out between Poland and Belarus.
2. Russia moves through Ukraine in a northward blitz toward Poland.
3. NATO and the US are called to help Poland and do not have a choice but to get involved by treaty
4. Russia destroys navies in the Black Sea (to prevent air support for Ukraine and Poland).

If this happens, China may realize "it's now or never...."
 

Old Gray Mare

TB Fanatic
Old Grey Mare just who are you thinking of? The Migrants were brought in by Belarus and placed where they are and are pepper-sprayed, tear-gassed, and possibly shot at with live fire if they try to retreat into Belarus (who flew them into their country with VISAS from the Middle East).

These people probably are largely Muslim, with a few Kurds and others who may practice other religions (including Christianity) but I don't see how female troops would affect them.

Belarus is PUSHING them onto the Polish side, where the Poles can either shoot them or try to keep them from getting in (which is what they have been doing).

Meanwhile, it is very cold and people are starting to freeze to death - I'm sure these people would LOVE to be ANYWHERE (probably even back to the Middle East) than where they are right now - which is trapped and being used by Belarus to try to provoke a war.

Now if Polish troops FIRE on the migrants they will be firing INTO BELARUS who can then "respond" to the attack - and boom it is WWIII or at least War in Europe.

This is why the Baltic States are also panicking, and the Ukraine isn't looking much better.

I repeat again, THIS IS NOT a USUAL BORDER SITUATION, this is using human beings as weapons, people who are pretty much trapped in that situation as is Poland.
You illustrated my point. It's a Muslim thing; getting killed by a woman is a religious and cultural taboo for them. The international optics especially to Muslims would probably end up hurting the Belarusian regime of Lukashenko more than Poland.

Generations ago the British had a conflict in Muslim territory. A rumor was circulated the British were using pork fat in their cartridges. It had the result of turning away possible area allies and stirring up the locals with religious fervor.
 

Knoxville's Joker

Has No Life - Lives on TB
This whole border situation is creating a huge stink with NATO and the UN. So much so all the other countries are following suit...
 
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