WARSAW, February 9. /TASS/. Secretary of the State at the Chancellery of the Prime Minister and Government Spokesperson, Piotr Muller, declined to disclose the reasons Thursday as to why the Polish government was closing the international border crossing with Belarus in Bobrowniki.
The decision to shut the border crossing was "prompted by security concerns," as Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski had previously reported, the spokesperson told a briefing in response to a journalist's question about the reasons for the move.
"Under the rules, such a decision can be made. So far, it concerns one crossing, one can use the other crossings. I have nothing more to report on this issue for the time being," Muller insisted.
The Bobrowniki border crossing will close at noon (2:00 p.m. Moscow time) on February 10. According to the spokesperson for the Polish Border Guard, Anna Michalska, this crossing point has been the only one in Podlaskie Voivodeship, which documented the transport of goods in the past year. After the decision to close it, just one functioning border crossing point in Terespol will remain open for passenger traffic on the Polish-Belarusian border, as well as the Kukuryki-Koroszczyn border crossing for cargo traffic. "At the moment there are no lines there," Michalska pointed out.
In November 2021, Poland closed the Kuznica border crossing amid the worsening migration crisis back then. At the time, thousands of migrants tried to cross into Poland. All in all, about 40,000 attempts by illegal migrants to breach the border into Poland from Belarus were recorded in 2021. A year earlier there were only 122 such incidents.
In recent months, the number of illegal migrants trying to enter the republic was not more than a few dozen a day. For the entire year of 2022, 15,700 such attempts were recorded. Most of them are stopped by the Polish authorities. If migrants manage to enter Polish territory, some of them are detained and sent to guarded centers, but most of them are sent back to Belarus.
Meanwhile, a source close to the State Border Committee of the Republic of Belarus told TASS on Thursday that Poland had decided to close the Bobrowniki border crossing point adjoining Belarus, because it is dissatisfied with the visa-free travel unilaterally introduced by Minsk for residents of Poland, Latvia and Lithuania.