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A crisis has been escalating along the border that divides Belarus and the European Union. For several weeks, thousands of migrants looking to reach the EU were trapped between Poland and Belarus, living in freezing camps with no humanitarian aid. Today, the migrants have been moved to warehouses for shelter, but this crisis isnt over.

Since 2015, Europe has experienced several migration waves, but this one was different: This one was manufactured. Belarus lured migrants to the border to pressure the EU to lift sanctions. And while this particular crisis has started to die down, the problem isnt going away. Its the result of a complex EU migration policy that has opened the door to the exploitation of migrants, and until that policy is fixed, Belarus or other bordering nations could create a crisis all over again.

To understand how Belarus manufactured this crisis and the geopolitical context that allowed it to happen, watch the video above.

You can find this video and all of Voxs videos on YouTube.

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There is a migrant crisis at the Poland-Belarus border - Vox.com

The Czech Republic on Wednesday announcedits government hadapproved a mandate to send150 troops to the Belarus-Poland border as the migrant crisis there continues.

The measure must also be approved by both chambers of the nation's parliament, which is expected,according toRadio Free Europe. This action by theCzech Republic comes just weeks after both Estonia and Britain deployed troops to the Belarus-Poland border.

"The government has just approved a mandate to send troops to protect the Polish-Belarusian border. Up to 150 soldiers are ready for a period of up to 180 days. The mandate has yet to be approved by both chambers of Parliament!"Czech Minister of DefenseLubomr Metnar tweeted.

Vlda prv schvlila mandt na vysln vojk na ochranu polsko-blorusk hranice. Pipraveno je a 150 vojk na dobu psoben a do 180 dn. Mandt jet mus schvlit ob komory Parlamentu!

Politico Europe reportedaround 100 Estonian and 100 British were being sent to Poland to help secure its border with Belarus.

Thousandsof migrants, mostly from the Middle East, have gathered at Belarus' borders with its European Union-member neighbors. Travel agents and migrants have reportedthat the Belarusian government encouraged easy migration to the country. Upon arriving, migrants were reportedly driven to the border of the EU, given wire cutters and encouraged to illegally cross into countries like Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.

The EU has accused Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of manufacturing the crisis and using the migrants for his own political purposes, namely to unsettle the EU as retribution for sanctions that were issued against his government.

The sanctions were issued following crackdowns on the pro-democracy movement in Belarus, a country which has been controlled by Lukashenko often referred to as "Europe's last dictator" for over two decades.

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Czechs move closer to sending troops to Poland-Belarus border amid migrant crisis | TheHill - The Hill

French authorities have confirmed the body was found by a fishing vessel off Calais on Friday. They claimed the body was believed to have been in the water for some time before it was discovered.

It is not known whether the body was one of the 27 unaccounted asylum seekers who lost their lives at sea while making the journey from France to Kent in November.

Estimates suggested between 34 and 50 people had been crammed in a flimsy inflatable dinghy when in capsize on November 24.

It was later confirmed that 27 people - including children - lost their lives, although the exact figure is still unclear.

According to Kent Online, one of those who died was a 24-year-old woman who was making the perilous journey to reach her fiance in the UK.

The International Organisation for Migration said this was the biggest single loss of life in the Channel since it began collecting data in 2014.

This year alone, the number of migrants crossing the Channel has exceeded 25,000.

Kevin Saunders, who was the UK's Chief Immigration Officer in Calais for 16-years, claimed the French refuse to assist further in the migrant crisis.

Last month, 27 people tragically lost their lives during an attempted crossing in one of the deadliest days on the English Channel.

READ MORE:Migrant crisis in numbers: Full stats

The Home Office confirmed 1,185 people had made the same journey all within 24 hours of each other.

As the number of migrants attempting to cross the Channel increases so too have the risks that people are willing to take in order to reach the UK.

Many of the individuals who look to enter the UK originate from some of the most deprived countries in the world such as Yemen, Sudan and Iraq.

Dan O'Mahoney, Clandestine Channel Threat Commander, said last month: "These journeys are dangerous and facilitated by violent criminal gangs profiting from misery.

"We are working with the French to stop boats leaving their beaches and crackdown on the criminals driving these crossings.

"People should claim asylum in the first safe country they reach.

"The Government's New Plan for Immigration will fix the asylum system, making it firm on those who abuse it and fair on those in genuine need."

While the total number of migrants crossing the Channel by boat has increased the opposite can be said for the number who attempt to claim asylum in the UK.

For the year ending in June 2021, the number had fallen by four percent compared with the previous 12 months.

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Body found caught in nets of fishing boat in English Channel investigation launched - Daily Express

If we falter, the Balkans will explode again, warned the United Kingdoms former Foreign Secretary William Hague.

Shortly afterward, British prime minister Boris Johnson named Air Chief Marshall Sir Stuart Peach as his envoy for the Western Balkans. Johnson argued that The Western Balkans are experiencing the biggest threat to their stability and security in over two decades. We have a responsibility to do all we can to preserve the gains achieved through peace and dialoguewe cannot allow any return to the violence and division of the past.

Wars in the Balkans traditionally erupt in spring or summer, with political tensions preceding in the months ahead. This year, the usually chilly autumn was marked by heated tensions and warmongering above average even for Balkan standards.

If there is one person who is solely responsible for the deteriorating stability in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which can have an impactful spillover effect, it is Milorad Dodik. The firebrand Serb ultra-nationalist, who serves as a member of the countrys tripartite rotating presidency, has been making headlines over the past decade for openly working toward the destruction and dismemberment of his own country.

Dodik and his henchmen have for years advocated for the creation of their own Abkhazia-styled mini-state which would encompass forty-nine percent of the country. It would be the finishing touch of Serb nationalist aspirations dating back to the 1990s and their genocide against Muslim Bosniaks. To be clear, what Milorad Dodik is advocating for is no different from what notorious war criminals such as Radovan Karadi and General Ratko Mladi wanted some thirty years ago.

More recently, Bosnian Serbs have upped the ante by pledging to re-create their own army, even threatening to expel Bosnian army troops from their barracks located in the Serb half of the country. If the West tries to intervene, warned Dodik, he would call his friends for help. This was a thinly veiled reference to Serbia and Russia, perhaps even Hungary, with whom Dodik has been nurturing ties in recent years.

Serbias position towards Bosnia and its open support towards Milorad Dodik and his policies is rather clear. Serbia is unwilling and unable to accept that its imagined dominions are now independent states. As it has never given up on its dream to create a Greater Serbia, it continues to fret, posture, and lash out in an attempt to assert its former status. Its drive to dominate the region stems from its implicit assumption of entitlement and exceptionalism.

But why would Moscow be interested in fomenting instability in the Balkans and why is Serbia its loyal ally?

To start with, Russia sees the geographical location of the Balkans as being the soft underbelly of the European Union. The region remains the last significant part of Europe that has not yet fully integrated into the EU and NATO structures, yet borders a number of NATO and EU member states. There are the tit-for-tat dynamics: since NATO has been infringing upon Soviet-era zones of influence in Moscows backyard (i.e., Georgia and Ukraine), Moscow feels entitled to reciprocate in NATOs backyard.

In addition, the Balkan region is located on the crossroads of a hydrocarbon route running from Russia to Turkey and the Black Sea. Moscow knows all too well that energy and geopolitics are intertwined.

Finally, a controlled crisis in the Balkans would keep the EU preoccupied while giving Russia leverage over more important projects, such as invading Ukraine or militarily scaffolding the Belarusian regime.

However, unlike the post-Soviet Central Asian states or the Caucasus, Russia is incapable of physically penetrating the Balkans, hence its reliance on local players. Moscow enjoys a series of local assets including highly placed nationalist Serb politicians, biker gangs, friendly paramilitary militias, murky businessmen, pro-Russian media outlets, and above all the Serbian Orthodox Church. Their combined actions are enough to keep fragile states in a permanent state of latent or low-intensity conflict, something that serves Russian interests.

The two main Russian allies are Serbias strongman Aleksandar Vui and Bosnias Serb member of the tripartite presidency Milorad Dodik.

Moscow has for years been sending up trial balloons to see what it can get away with before hitting hard when the opportunity arises. It seems that the Western silence was taken as a green light.

The EU seems to be distracted and rudderless, absolutely lacking a common approach towards its foreign policy and security issues. The blocks biggest economic powerhouse, Germany, is in a post-Merkel transition, while France, another major player, is busy preparing for next years elections. The number of recalcitrant member states, such as Poland and Hungary, is constantly rising. Given the fourth wave of Covid-19, the EU is more concerned with digital Covid vaccine passports than with outlining a cogent response towards Moscows hybrid wars.

On the other hand, Washington has made a number of lamentable blunders in the past couple of months, including its disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, caving on Nord Stream II, and mishandling the sale of nuclear submarines to Australia so badly that longtime ally France temporarily pulled its ambassador in anger.

The Kremlin interpreted all of this as a lack of a coherent transatlantic strategy.

Russian president Vladimir Putin recognizes the moment, and with the winter in full swing, he is upping the ante by manufacturing a series of concurrent crises. The migrant crisis along the Belarus-Poland border, the gas war with Central and East European states, constant violations of Baltic airspace, the massing of troops along Ukraines borders, and the Balkan security crisis are all part of the same hybrid war. His goal is to divide, pressure, and weaken the EU while at the same time testing NATOs resolve.

Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki, with his country directly affected by the migrant crisis, had no doubts as to who is behind the crisis. This attack which Lukashenka is conducting has its mastermind in Moscow, the mastermind is President Putin, Morawiecki said. Similarly, former Croatian foreign minister Vesna Pusi cleverly noted There is no doubt that Russia is the main disruptor in the Balkans, using its local pawns to implement that policy. Its objectives, however, most likely transcend the region and include finding a broader compromise with the EU.

Looking at this from a broader perspective, the EU is now surrounded by a belt of instability. Emboldened by the inability of the EU and United States to firmly stand up to its actions, Moscow is set to continue pursuing its strategic goals.

However, it is a highly pernicious illusion to think that the EU has the will and capacity to act in a unified manner against Kremlins hybrid wars.

Much like in brokering peace following the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s, the only force capable of confronting Moscows designs today is the United States. How the United States responds to these overt military threats will have far-reaching consequences for the security of Europe and the transatlantic alliance.

The United States should start by increasing its military presence in Bosnia and Herzegovina to ensure that the liberal democratic order is maintained and that the country does not slide into conflict. Should Bosnian Serbs declare independence and secede, then NATO will have an Abkhazia-like state on its borders. Second, the United States should send higher-ranking leadership instead of mediocre State Department officials who are merely interested in short-term solutions to ensure quick career promotions. Finally, the Biden administration should push for fast-tracking Bosnias accession to NATO. This would anchor the country firmly within the alliance and secure American political investment in the region.

The conflict with Russia cannot be avoided. It has already begun.

Harun Kariis a journalist and political analyst based in Sarajevo covering foreign influences in the Balkans. He tweets@HarunKarcic.

Image: Reuters

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Russia's New Front In the Balkans Heats Up - The National Interest

BRUZGI, Belarus Thousands of freezing, desperate migrants retreated last week from a sprawling encampment along Belaruss border with Poland but Polish security forces are still mobilized for battle along the frontier, backed by a water cannon, its turret aimed at a threat that has mostly vanished, at least from view.

Polands readiness to repel attack highlights the political calculations of a government in Warsaw that, with its support threatened by rising inflation, a lethal new surge in Covid infections and a host of other problems, is reluctant to let go of a border crisis that has boosted the nationalist governing party, Law and Justice.

This crisis suits Law and Justice and allows it to consolidate citizens around the government, as is usually the case in times of danger, said Antoni Dudek, a political science professor at Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw. Letting the crisis calm, he added, would reverse this because voters would begin to remember all the bad things Law and Justice would like them to forget.

Scenes of migrants trying to storm the border and being repelled by blasts of icy water from Poland, as happened early last week here at Bruzgi, reinforced the Polish governing partys message that only it can defend the country against what it portrays as invading foreign hordes, and they also help it to defuse a crisis with the European Union. Poland joined the bloc in 2004 but has been at loggerheads with it for months over issues like the treatment of the L.G.B.T.Q. community, womens rights and the rule of law.

Last week, Belarus shut down the huge and increasingly squalid migrant settlement flush against the Polish border, removing a key flash point and shifting the main focus of the crisis to the repatriation of asylum seekers. The European Commission estimated on Tuesday that there were up to 15,000 migrants still in Belarus, with about 2,000 near the borders with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.

Instead of declaring victory, Warsaw is insisting that the struggle rages on, with Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki declaring on Sunday that at this very moment, a hybrid war is taking place on the Polish-Belarusian border.

ReadMore onthe Belarus-Poland Border Crisis

After months of denouncing the European Union as a bully whose insistence on L.G.B.T.Q. rights and judicial independence posed a threat to Polish sovereignty and Christian values, Poland now presents itself as the blocs indispensable guardian, promoting a new government slogan with its own hashtag: #WeDefendEurope.

This message, embraced by fellow members of the European Union, has largely eclipsed Polands previous image as an inveterate troublemaker whose hostility to sexual minorities and refusal to abide by the rulings of Europes top court raised questions about the countrys future E.U. membership.

At home, the Law and Justice party has used the rhetoric of war to bolster its waning popularity, with headlines like Attack on Poland and Another mass assault on the Polish border appearing in the state media. And the national bank plans to issue commemorative coins and notes to honor the defense of the Polish eastern border.

Those efforts appear to have gained traction among many Poles.

The situation of migrants makes me sad, but it is not Polands fault, said Elzbieta Kabac, 57, who owns a guesthouse in Narewka, near the border. We should praise the soldiers and the police for protecting our borders, because we are not ready to take those migrants in. She added: The European Union doesnt need any more migrants.

In one recent opinion poll, 54 percent of Poles surveyed said that the governments response to the crisis was very good or fairly good, with 34 percent saying it was very bad or fairly bad.

Opinion polls also indicate that the border crisis has slowed what had been a steady decline in the governing partys popularity, but that it could still lose power in an election. An opinion poll published Monday in Gazeta Wyborcza, a liberal newspaper, showed Law and Justice as Polands most popular party, with around 30 percent of those surveyed supporting it, but gave opposition parties a good chance of winning a majority in Parliament if they formed a united front. The next parliamentary elections are scheduled for 2023.

Until the border crisis hit with full force this fall, Law and Justice was stumbling badly, shaken by internal quarrels and the withholding of tens of billions of euros from the European Union in aid that the party was relying on to deliver its Polish deal, a package of handouts to the poor and tax hikes for the rich.

With economic and other problems blunting the power of its promise to defend family values, the governing party seized on the border crisis to consolidate support, denouncing as traitors critics of its hard-line policy of pushing back all migrants, even legitimate asylum seekers, pregnant women and the gravely ill.

Many Poles have rallied behind the government. Soldiers of Christ, a group that supports the governments tough line on migrants, organized a mass prayer in the town of Koden on Sunday, saying they intended to defend the nearby border. And in Bialystok, the capital of the region near the Belarus border, a far-right youth organization, Mlodziez Wszechpolska, marched in support of the policy.

There have also been ugly scenes near the border in recent weeks with right-wing vigilantes attacking Polish aid workers trying to help migrants who have made it across.

Poles opposed to the hard-line policy on migrants have also taken to the streets, however, and some have been helping the few who make it into Poland. In the border town of Hajnowka on Saturday, protesters called for the opening of a humanitarian corridor for migrants, and accused border guards of having blood on their hands.

There have been numerous reports of Polish armed services pushing asylum seekers back into Belarus, most recently by Human Rights Watch. The Polish government passed a special law last month to authorize pushbacks, which are against international law.

On Thursday, The Times saw a group of asylum seekers being loaded on a military truck and being driven to the border guards office.

When asked about the group, Katarzyna Zdanowicz, the spokeswoman for the Polish border guards, responded: Eleven people did not seek asylum in Poland. They wanted to go to France or Ireland. They received an order to leave Poland. They were escorted to the border line.

Polish aid groups working in the forests that straddle the frontier have reported a sharp drop in the number of migrants crossing the border in recent days. But Polish authorities say that Belarus has merely changed its tactics and is now sending small groups to try and breach the border at night. With the Polish side of the border off limits to all news media, however, this claim is impossible to verify.

Even as European figures show the crisis peaked months ago, the Polish government has insisted it is only getting worse. The European bloc border agency, Frontex, reported this week that the number of migrants entering the bloc through Belarus rose to an all-time high of 3,200 in July but has fallen steadily since, dropping to around only 600 in October.

While the Polish governments tough stance has clearly energized its base, it is unclear whether the tactic will conjure up new support.

The jury is still out on what lies ahead for Law and Justice, said Piotr Buras, the head of the Warsaw office of the European Council on Foreign Relations. The migration crisis helped to consolidate the core electorate, but not necessarily boost its popularity outside it. And there are other problems that Poles care about, mainly inflation and the worsening Covid-19 situation.

The European Commission has held up the disbursement to Poland of $42 billion from a coronavirus recovery fund over rule-of-law violations. But if the commission freed up the funds, Mr. Buras said, it would re-establish trust of those that were drifting away from the government in recent months.

He added: In the end, it is a trap. The party is getting more and more radicalized in their policies. They are becoming hostage to their most radical voters.

Andrew Higgins reported from Bruzgi, Belarus, and Monika Pronczuk from Hajnowka, Poland. Anatol Magdziarz contributed reporting from Warsaw and James Hill from Bruzgi.

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Migrant Crisis at Polands Border Eases Pressure on Its Government - The New York Times