Poland - Belarus Migrant Crisis

The actions of Belarussian leader Alexander Lukashenko, the last dictator in Europe and the Kremlin's closest ally, should not be a surprise. The scenes of desperate Middle Eastern migrants, including women and children, huddling in the cold in the heavy forests along the Belarussian and Polish borders are hard to witness. However, this is an entirely manufactured and cynical human trafficking ordeal that is being done for the most cynical political reasons by Alexander Lukashenko in his attempts to destabilize the EU. For all of the conflict that Poland has had with EU bureaucrats in Brussels over the past few years, it is telling that the EU is nonetheless standing behind Poland in support of the nation's own territorial integrity and border security. The days of open borders into the EU such as was essentially the case during the great migrant wave of 2015 is now over. Poland is a sovereign nation and has the right to defend itself and to ensure its own border security.

Lukashenko was behind what was in essence a state-sanctioned hijacking in May when a dissident was seized after a RyanAir flight was forced to divert to Mink, and now we are seeing state-sanctioned human trafficking on large and organized scale. I feel terribly for the innocent people caught up in this mess, but there will likely be no simple or easy solution to this crisis.

Below: Migrants warm themselves by a fire in the border region near Grodno, Belarus.

 Leonid Shcheglov BelTA, AP