MINSK, November 9. /TASS/: Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has slammed Poland’s most recent actions as blackmail, as Warsaw sent Leopard tanks to the border with Belarus in the wake of the current escalating crisis between the two states sparked by illegal migrants’ attempts to penetrate EU territory.
"Pardon me but fighting against migrants with Leopards? We are well versed militarily and understand what it means today to wage war with these poor people on Poland’s border with, say, Belarus, and to advance columns of tanks. It’s obvious that this is either some sort of training or blackmail," Lukashenko said in an interview with Russia’s National Defense magazine, with its excerpts published by the BelTA news agency on Tuesday.
"You must agree that in today’s world, taking up arms is tantamount to death or suicide. Especially here, in the heart of Europe and even more so [in a conflict] with Belarus. You always unleashed all the wars on this piece of land in the center and everything began from here. Haven’t you learned anything from history?" Lukashenko emphasized.
It was reported in late October that the Polish authorities planned to send 2,500 troops to help the border guards protect the border area from illegal migrants. The Polish side has also decided to send units of the 10th Armored Cavalry Brigade on Leopard tanks to the town of Biala Podlaska on the border with Belarus. Also, US Abrams and German Leopard tanks were engaged in drills in Lithuania near the borders with Belarus.
The migration crisis on the border of Belarus with Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, where illegal migrants are seeking to cross into EU territory, escalated on November 8. Several thousand migrants have approached the Polish border from Belarus and are refusing to leave the area. Some of them have attempted to venture into Polish territory by breaking a barbed wire fence. EU countries have accused Minsk of deliberately provoking the crisis and called for more sanctions against Belarus.
For his part, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has said that Western countries are to blame for these developments because it is precisely their actions that have caused people to flee countries ravaged by wars triggered by the West.
