MINSK, November 9. /TASS/. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said that a mafia-like structure operates in the European Union and organizes the transit of migrants. 

"People go to the border. Yesterday, for the first time, about 2,000 of them or maybe slightly more than that have been in various places — in Minsk, in forests. They were transported there," Lukashenko said in an interview to the editor-in-chief of the Russian magazine National Defense, Igor Korotchenko. The Belarusian news agency BelTA has quoted an extract from this interview.

According to him, certain people take care of their transit. "They help migrants board aircraft, welcome them in Belarus, take them to the border, help them cross the border, and then Poles, Germans, Ukrainians welcome them over there. Everything is in exchange for money," the Belarusian president said adding that Minsk tracks down the whole scheme. "People in Poland have already been detained and they even had to declare who they are. No Belarusians and only two Russians among them. And dozens of the transit facilitators that help migrants travel are Germans and primarily Poles, there are also Ukrainians and Lithuanians". According to him, a "certain mafia-like structure enables transit."

"They have their own cells in Germany, France, and other countries. They call each other, tell migrants to come and promise they will be welcomed. And they look forward to the migrants’ arrival," Lukashenko said. He also noted that the migrants do not travel to "an empty space", they travel specifically to the people waiting for them in Germany instead. "Some have relatives, friends, and someone else. It would be stupid to think that people are just crazy enough to travel for thousands of kilometers. Everything is smoothly organized. And Belarus is just another stage of the journey," Lukashenko pointed out.