MOSCOW, November 9./TASS/. The information campaign of accusations launched by the West against Russia over the migration crisis on the border of Belarus with Latvia, Lithuania and Poland is an attempt to dodge responsibility for the developments. A new wave of the crisis was triggered by action from the Western partners, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Spas TV channel on Tuesday.
"I thought it was just unscrupulousness of the media that rolled it out in the past few weeks, alleging that Moscow is behind this. Then I realized that we are once again facing a certain information campaign. Today these guesses and suspicions have found their confirmation," the diplomat said.
"There is only one rationale - departure from the reality and unwillingness to see the essence of the problem," she went on to say. "An endless attempt to find the guilty parties, [accusing everyone] but themselves. <…> We are witnessing a new wave of the migration crisis triggered by respective action by our Western partners throughout decades, not just in a year or two, in the region of the Middle East and North Africa," Zakharova said.
The Western countries themselves were demonstrating to the world their good attitude to the refugees and imposed the European way of life as exemplary, the diplomat went on to say. "Wasn’t it Poland, Lithuania and other Baltic states, Brussels that were telling the world for many months how the refugees, arriving also from the territory of Belarus, should be treated?" she noted. "The refugees who cannot find happiness and tranquility in their homeland. The story of Ms. Tikhanovskaya was presented to the whole world," she said.
"Did they think that nobody was seeing this when they were showing these pictures on all channels of Western mainstream? Or, did they think that people would not believe this? People gave credit to what they saw," the diplomat went on to say.
"And by the way, they consider themselves no worse than representatives from other states, Belarus as well, who find refuge or temporary home and speak about this," she explained.
The migration crisis on the border of Belarus with Latvia, Lithuania and Poland deteriorated dramatically on November 8. Several thousand people approached the Polish border from the Belarusian side and are not leaving the border zone. Some of them have tried to cross into Poland by cutting razor wire fences. The European Union accuses Minsk of intentionally escalating the crisis and urges sanctions. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko blamed the situation on Western countries themselves, since their action had prompted people to flee the war.