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Poland open for negotiations with Russia on migration crisis on border with Belarus

Poland's top diplomat pointed out that the talks concerning Belarus, the Polish-Belarusian ties and the future of Belarus should be held with the Belarusian opposition

WARSAW, November 23. /TASS/. The Polish authorities are ready to discuss with Russia the migration crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border, however, they are open for talks with Belarus only at the technical level, Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau told the Polish radio on Tuesday.

"Poland is open for negotiations with Russia, but the talks concerning Belarus and the Polish-Belarusian ties, the future of Belarus, as we believe, should be held with the Belarusian opposition," the top diplomat stated.

"At the technical level, we are ready to negotiate with the current Belarusian leadership, but this is [the only option]," Rau went on to say. "The issues regarding Belarus’ political destiny need to be raised, and this is a significant objective of the Polish policy, which the Belarusian public trusts," the foreign minister concluded.

Furthermore, Rau called Russia the ‘director’ of the current crisis on the border, while Belarus was described as the ‘performer’.

Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin castigated the accusations against Russia about alleged meddling in the situation with migrants on the EU-Belarusian border as attempts to pass the buck. According to the head of state, Russia has nothing to do with this issue, and the Western countries are looking for someone to blame in order to evade their responsibility for the events.

The migrant crisis on the border of Belarus with Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, where migrants have rushed since the beginning of the year, sharply escalated on November 8. Several thousand people came from the Belarusian side to the Polish border and did not leave the border zone. Some of them tried to enter Poland by breaking the barbed wire fence. The EU countries accuse Minsk of deliberately escalating the crisis and call for the imposition of sanctions. Meanwhile, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko stated that the Western countries themselves were to blame for this situation, because of their actions people were fleeing the war.

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