The migrant standoff at Belarus’s borders with Poland and Lithuania is both a humanitarian crisis and a geopolitical one. Belarus’s Kremlin-backed dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, has manufactured the crisis in response to EU sanctions imposed on him after he crushed a democracy movement protesting last year’s rigged elections, jailing 800 political activists according to some reports, with some alleging rape and torture. Financial sanctions in particular, say security analysts, have cut deep into the lifestyles of the Belarusian oligarchy.
In May, Lukashenko warned Europe’s governments: “We stopped drugs and migrants. Now you will eat them and catch them yourselves.” Since then, a steady and rising stream of migrants have been flown in from Turkish camps, prodded to the border fence and beaten if they attempt to return. As a result, between 5,000 and 20,000 remain trapped in makeshift encampments in the forest, facing malnourishment and hypothermia.
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