LONDON, November 20. /TASS/. Without any contacts with the European Union, Belarus will have to sort out the problem of migrants on the EU border on its own, "as best we can," Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said in an interview with BBC.
"The West stopped talking to us and working with us. If you don’t want to - then fine. We’ll sort this problem out ourselves. As best we can," the president said in an excerpt of the interview, published by the BBC website on Friday.
When asked to comment on Polish Defense Ministry’s statement that Belarusian officers helped illegal migrants to cross the Polish-Belarusian border, Lukashenko replied: "It’s perfectly possible. I think that’s absolutely possible."
"We're Slavs. We have hearts. Our troops know the migrants are going to Germany," the Belarusian president was quoted as saying. "Maybe someone helped them. I won’t even look into this."
Lukashenko reiterated that the crisis was not orchestrated by his government in order to put pressure on the European Union.
"I told the EU I’m not going to detain migrants on the border, hold them at the border, and if they keep coming from now on I still won’t stop them, because they are not coming to my country, they are going to yours," he was quoted as saying. "But I didn't invite them here. And to be honest, I don't want them to go through Belarus."
The migration crisis at Belarus’ border with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia deteriorated dramatically on November 8, when several thousand migrants approached the Polish border and set up a camp there. From time to time they try to break through the fences and cross into Poland, but are stopped by Polish law enforcers. On November 16, migrants broke through the fences on the Belarusian side of the border and tossed stones and logs at Polish soldiers. In response, the Polish side used stun grenade and water cannons to stop the border storming attempt. The situation normalized after some 60-90 minutes.
EU countries accuse Minsk of the deliberate escalation of the crisis and call for more sanctions against Belarus. Meanwhile, Lukashenko said that the blame for this situation rests on Western countries because people are fleeing their countries gripped by hostilities provoked by their actions.
Action against opposition
In his interview, the Belarusian leader was also quoted as saying that he was set to take tough actions against opposition members and non-governmental organizations financed by the West.
"We'll massacre all the scum that you [the West] have been financing. Oh, you're upset we've destroyed all your structures! Your NGOs, whatever they are, that you've been paying for," he was quoted as saying in an excerpt from the interview published on the BBC website.
He also admitted that some participants of last year’s mass protests in Minsk were beaten up in a detention center.
"OK, OK, I admit it, I admit it," the Belarusian leader was quoted as saying. "People were beaten in the Okrestina detention centre. But there were police beaten up too and you didn't show this."
On August 9, 2020, Belarus held a presidential election which, according to the Central Election Commission’s official results, incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko won by a landslide, his closest rival in the race, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, came in second. However, she refused to recognize the election’s outcome and left the country as did a number of opposition activists. Following the vote, mass demonstrations protesting the election results engulfed Belarus which in the first days resulted in clashes between the protesters and police and then mass rallies, meetings and demonstrations continued in the country for several months.