WARSAW, October 12. /TASS/. Warsaw will ramp up the number of servicemen on the border with Belarus, Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak reported on Tuesday.
The defense chief pointed out that 3,000 servicemen are already supporting the border guard. "This number will be increased," he assured, adding that everything depends on the situation and the needs that should be voiced by the border guard service. "We are ready to double this number," Blaszczak stressed.
In total, since August, over 16,000 migrants have attempted to illegally cross the Polish border from Belarusian soil. Border guards foiled the bulk of such attempts. More than 1,800 illegal migrants were taken into custody, and 1,500 were placed in special centers in Poland. The authorities discovered that about 50 of them posed a potential security threat to the country since they are involved in terrorist organizations and criminal gangs. The Polish authorities hold the Belarusian leadership responsible for what is happening, which, according to Warsaw, delivers migrants to their country and then sends them across the border to Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia in order to spark a migrant crisis in Europe. At the end of May, Lukashenko stated that his country had served as a barrier to human trafficking to neighboring countries. However, considering the West’s ramped-up political pressure, Minsk has had second thoughts about continuing to block the flow.