2024-07-17 14:47 update: 2024-07-17, 14:50
Photo PAP/Rafał Guz
The Polish government will create special border guard units to prevent illegal crossings from Belarus and will set up a new border protection component within the country's Territorial Defence Force, a deputy interior minister has said.
Poland has seen increasing illegal migration attempts at its border with Belarus since 2021, when the Belarusian strongman, Alexander Lukashenko, decided to retaliate for EU sanctions on Minsk by mounting migration pressure on the EU. To this end, Belarus invited thousands of migrants to the country under a false promise of easy access to the EU across the Polish and Lithuanian borders.
Czeslaw Mroczek announced the new measures at a press conference in Warsaw on Wednesday.
"Within the Border Guard we're creating special units modelled on the prevention units of the police, which will be specially prepared to handle attempts of illegal border crossings and aggressive crowds wielding dangerous items," Mroczek said.
In late May, a Polish soldier was stabbed with a knife mounted on a stick as a crowd of migrants gathered on the Belarusian side of the border fence, trying to force their way into Poland.
"We'll be making consistent steps towards containment of the illegal migration route from Belarus to Poland," Mroczek said. "We're aware that this route has been organised by the criminal world with the support of Russian and Belarusian services, but we are successfully catching the criminals who are carrying out this task."
Mroczek said that last year Poland detained 600 "smugglers involved in collecting people from the Polish border and transporting them further west." According to him, this year the number has already reached 400.
Additionally, the voluntary Territorial Defence Force will have a new unit specialising in border protection, Mroczek said.
"The head of General Staff, General Wieslaw Kukula and deputy (Defence - PAP) Minister Cezary Tomczyk have announced that a border protection component will be created within the Territorial Defence Force," Mroczek said. (PAP)
jd/mf
