MOSCOW, November 23. /TASS/. Russia in cooperation with Belarus will continue to react proportionately to provocations, including military ones, near the borders of the Union State, the chief of Russia’s Security Council, Nikolay Patrushev, told the weekly Argumenty i Fakty in an interview.
"In cooperation with Minsk we will continue to react proportionately to provocations, including military ones, near the borders of the Union State," he said, when asked if Russia would support Belarus in the situation involving the migrant crisis.
Patrushev said that Belarus was Russia’s closest ally and strategic partner.
"The package of new integration agreements that the presidents of Russia and Belarus signed on November 4 demonstrates once again the special relations of alliance between our countries. Attempts to drive a wedge between them are doomed to fail," he said.
The migration crisis on the Belarusian borders with Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, where migrants began to flock in since the beginning of this year, went into high gear on November 8. Several thousand people approached the Polish border on the Belarusian side and tried to cross into Poland. In an attempt to storm the border they broke a barbed wire fence. On November 16 several groups of migrants broke through the Belarusian border fence and started hurling stones at Polish police, who retaliated with stun grenades and water jets.
Currently, about 2,000 migrants have moved from the border zone to the nearby transport logistics center Bruzgi. The EU countries have blamed Minsk for the intentional escalation of the crisis and called for more sanctions. Lukashenko said that in this situation the responsibility rested squarely on the Western countries, whose policies had forced people to flee from war.