MINSK, November 16. /TASS/. Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko on Tuesday said Belarus didn’t deploy troops to the Polish border, but has plans to counter any aggression, BelTA reported.
"I have just said that there are about 20,000 armed people on the other side of the border," Lukashenko said at a meeting dedicated to the ongoing crisis. "We haven’t deployed a single platoon, a single company of the armed forces there, at the border."
"But we have plans to counter any aggression from their side. I gave this order to the defense minister and other generals and the military and security agencies," he said.
Poland is boosting its troops on the border with aircraft and armored vehicles, building a combat strike force, Lukashenko said. "This is all done under the disguise of protecting the European Union from an invasion of refugees from the countries that have been bombed and looted by a Western coalition led by the US," he said.
Belarusian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin told reporters after the meeting that amid the migration crisis, Poland deployed 23,000 troops at the border, setting up camps for them, and a large number of armored vehicles. "Unfortunately, we don’t see how that makes any sense," he said. "We are planning appropriate action to counter their inappropriate action, so that we don’t create tensions and conflict situations in the region."
"It’s hard to predict what decisions they are making," he went on to say. "We suppose that our neighbors may be trying to reap political and economic bonuses, and maybe, pull the entire European Union into the problem at our border."
The Vienna Document, which contains some military confidence-and security-building measures for Europe, calls for an exchange of information between countries if one of them deploys more than 6,000 troops at the border, the minister said. Poland hasn’t responded to Belarusian requests for information, he said.
Poland earlier summoned the Belarusian military attache, and Belarus did the same, he said. "Their military attache just packed up and left - on holiday or where, I don't know," said the minister.
The migrant crisis on the Belarusian border with Latvia, Lithuania and Poland where migrants have been flocking since the beginning of the year, worsened sharply on November 8. Several thousand people approached the Polish border from Belarus and refused to leave the border zone while some of them attempted to cross into Poland after tearing down a barbed-wire fence. About 2,000 migrants are now staying in a makeshift camp. The EU countries have accused Minsk of an intentional escalation of the crisis and have called for sanctions. Lukashenko put the blame on the Western countries, whose actions prompted people to flee wars in their homeland.