Tensions on the European Union's eastern border escalated sharply this week as Polish border guards repulsed a wave of some 4,000 asylum seekers and migrants [13] seeking to cross from Belarus. Poland has mobilized 15,000 soldiers [14] to the region to prevent people from crossing, and Belarusian security forces are not allowing the migrants to turn back. The migrants are sleeping rough [15] as temperatures plunge below freezing; a 14-year-old boy froze to death [16], becoming at least the eleventh person to have died attempting to cross the border. There are fears [17] the situation could result in a military confrontation.
Russian President Vladimir Putin—an ally of Belarus' authoritarian president, Alexander Lukashenko—brushed off an appeal [20] from German Chancellor Angela Merkel to intervene. The Polish parliament on Oct. 14 approved a bill [21] calling for building a border wall on the frontier with Belarus, which is now under construction. Poland accuses Belarus of allowing [22] migrants to transit through the country and enter Poland as revenge for the EU imposing [23] sanctions against Belarus earlier this year in response to human rights abuses. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen accused Belarus of using the migrants in a "hybrid attack." The EU is now threatening more sanctions [24], and Belarus is threatening to cut off [25] gas supplies to the EU through the Yamal-Europe pipeline. (TNH [26], Jurist [27], DW [28])
