More than two weeks later, some 2,000 migrants are still waiting at a logistics center on the border with Poland. Many of them still hope to be accepted in Germany. “We certainly don’t want to go to Iraq and stay until we are allowed into the European Union,” Gashtiar, 25, said of the German news agency DPA on Tuesday. The Ministry of the Interior in Minsk announced that 118 migrants again voluntarily left and returned to their homeland.
Voluntary returns will continue. Most of the immigrants are Kurds from Iraq and Syria. Some of them speak German or have families in Germany, but have recently been unable to obtain a visa due to the pandemic. The majority of people insist on joining the European Union, according to the state agency Belta, said Alexei Begun, head of the Migration Department of the Interior Ministry in Minsk.
Poland confirmed that Belarus has already returned hundreds of refugees from the Middle East to their countries of origin. After at least one flight last week, another plane with 118 migrants on board took off from Minsk on Monday, Polish news agency Stanislaw Zarin reported on Tuesday. More flights planned for this week.
“But this is not evidence that the Lukashenko regime is moving away from its strategic plan,” Zarin told Polish television station TVBinfo, which is close to the government. It would be premature to view the returns as a step toward de-escalation on the part of Belarusian Governor Alexander Lukashenko. At the same time, there are signs that other migrants are being brought to the border with Poland. Their attempts to breach the border are becoming “more and more aggressive”. He said no one has applied for refugee status in Belarus. They also reject all proposals to return to their country.”
Lukashenko has called for a humanitarian corridor for 2,000 migrants to the European Union. The West accuses him of deliberately luring migrants to the country and to the borders in order to destabilize the situation in the European Union. Lukashenko, who is seen as “Europe’s last dictator”, has said several times in response to EU sanctions against Belarus that he will not stop anyone on their way to the West.
The Belarusian force apparatus is demanding funding from the European Union in order to stop migrants again in the future. In addition, the European Union has to compensate the current expenses of migrants in the emergency shelter by about 20 thousand euros per day.
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