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Polish Defense Ministry to deploy 2,000 more troops to guard eastern border with Belarus

Poland faced a serious migration crisis on the border with Belarus in the fall of 2021, with about 40,000 attempts of illegal border crossings beign recorded

TASS, August 9. TASS/. The Polish Defense Ministry will send an additional 2,000 servicemen to the Polish-Belarusian border, the country's Deputy Interior Minister Maciej Wonsik told the Polish Press Agency.

"The reinforcement will be not one thousand, but two thousand soldiers. Such a decision was made in the Security Committee," he said, adding that the servicemen would be at the border within two weeks.

On Monday, Polish Border Guard Commander-in-Chief Tomasz Praga asked the Defense Ministry to send another 1,000 servicemen to the Polish-Belarusian border, where 2,000 troops are currently deployed.

Poland faced a serious migration crisis on the border with Belarus in the fall of 2021. In total, about 40,000 attempts at illegal border crossings were recorded; the year before, there were only 122. This year, the border guard counted 19,000 attempts by immigrants to illegally enter Poland, whereas last year there were 16,000.

In recent months, the number of migrants attempting to illegally enter Poland has been about one hundred per day. Most of their attempts are interdicted by Polish security services. If migrants do manage to cross into Polish territory, some are detained and sent to guarded centers, but most are returned to the Belarusian side.

According to the Polish authorities, the crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border is being provoked by the Belarusian and Russian authorities in order to destabilize the situation on NATO's eastern flank. Moscow and Minsk have repeatedly denied these allegations.