(AP) A Somali woman pushes her bandaged hand between two vertical bars of a thick metal barrier separating Belarus from Poland as she and four other women gaze toward the European Union. They nod gratefully as a Polish humanitarian aid worker calls […]
(AFP) Poland has dismantled an alleged migrant trafficking network at the Polish-Belarusian border which was suspected of providing millions of dollars in financing to armed groups like Hezbollah, prosecutors said Tuesday. Thirty-six Polish, Ukrainian, Iraqi and Belarusian members of the alleged network […]
(AP) When Finland joined NATO earlier this year, Russia threatened retaliation. Now, hundreds of migrants from the Middle East and Africa have appeared at Finland’s border from Russia, seeking entry into the Nordic country. Finnish officials say the sudden surge in asylum-seekers […]
(AP) Latvia is growing worried over the increasing number of migrants attempting to cross over into the Baltic nation through the border with Belarus and has called up the military to assist border guards. Latvia’s State Border Guard said on Tuesday that […]
(AP) Belarus is introducing a visa-free travel arrangement with dozens of countries for a month, raising fears that neighboring Poland and Lithuania might see a sudden increase in unauthorized migration. The authoritarian president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, signed a decree allowing citizens […]
(AP) Lithuania is seeking up to 120 million euros in compensation from Belarus, accusing its eastern neighbor of orchestrating the immigration of thousands of people, mainly from Africa and the Middle East. Since 2021, when the European Union imposed sanctions on Belarus […]
(AP) The Polish border service on Friday reported an increase in the number of Middle Eastern migrants trying to illegally cross into the European Union at the border of Belarus and Poland. In the past 24 hours, border agents detained 117 migrants […]
(AFP) Lithuania on Monday said it had finished building a fence along its border with Belarus to fight illegal immigration which the West accuses Minsk of orchestrating. Illegal immigration has soared in EU member Lithuania this year, with around 4,200 migrants mainly […]
(AP) Polish officials on Thursday reported a change in migration patterns across the country’s border with Belarus, with Africans who first traveled to Russia making up most of those seeking to enter Poland illegally by that route instead of people from the […]
(AP) A year after migrants started crossing into the European Union from Belarus to Poland, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and top security officials visited the border area on Thursday to mark the completion of a new steel wall. On Friday, Polish […]
(AP) European Union interior ministers on Thursday agreed to create a new decision-making body amid efforts to beef up the 27-nation bloc’s borders, and to kick-start desperately needed reforms to the EU’s malfunctioning asylum system on a step-by-step basis. The EU has […]
(AP) French President Emmanuel Macron is taking aim at migration — a core issue in the country’s presidential campaign — by pushing to strengthen the European Union’s external borders against people illegally entering the bloc’s passport-free area. Macron is expected to run […]
(AP) Ministers from European Union nations under pressure from unauthorized border crossings asked Friday for more action to protect the bloc’s external borders as well as for rules to return migrants to their homelands or where they started their journeys. Interior ministers […]
(AP) Poland’s Border Guard authorities say that almost 600 attempts by migrants at illegally crossing the border from Belarus have been foiled so far this year. The attempts have continued since their peak in the fall, but the number of registered tries […]
(AFP) Baghdad has repatriated almost 4,000 of its citizens stuck on the Belarus borders with European Union members Poland, Lithuania and Latvia in recent weeks, Iraq’s foreign minister said Sunday. Since November 18, the Iraqi government has organised “10 flights from Baghdad […]
(AP) Latvia, Lithuania and Poland continue to use questionable methods to keep out migrants trying to enter from Belarus and are denying access to aid groups trying to help people stuck in border areas, senior U.N. refugee agency and European Union officials […]
(Reuters) Sleeping on mattresses in a Belarusian warehouse, hundreds of Middle Eastern migrants are still clinging to the hope of a future in western Europe as the year draws to a close. The nearly 600 migrants, from countries including Iraq, Turkey, Iran […]
(Reuters) [The] Lithuanian Interior Ministry said Belarus authorities have ordered migrants to be cleared from a warehouse near the Polish border and from Minsk, which could lead to renewed attempts to push the migrants in large numbers into the European Union. At […]
(AP) The European Union on Tuesday launched a major revamp of the rules governing the movement of people and goods into and around Europe as coronavirus restrictions and fears over a “hybrid attack” from Belarus using migrants are placing increasing strains on […]
(AP) Top European Union migration officials offered Wednesday to ease the asylum-evaluation rules for Poland, Lithuania and Latvia in response to what the EU has called a “hybrid attack” by Belarus to destabilize the bloc using migrants and refugees. The move would […]
(AP) Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Monday accused Lithuanian authorities of dumping the bodies of migrants on the border between the two countries — a claim rejected by Lithuania amid soaring border tensions between Belarus and its European Union neighbors. Lukashenko also […]
(AFP) From her green-painted homestead near the Belarusian border, Lithuanian pensioner Jadvyga Mackevic remembers the day she saw three migrants coming out of the forest and being detained. “I barely saw them through my window. The border patrol immediately caught them,” the […]
(AFP) Belarus’s strongman leader Alexander Lukashenko told migrants on the border with Poland Friday that he would not try to stop them from reaching the European Union, urging Germany to take them in. In footage released by state media, Lukashenko was shown […]
(AP) The leaders of three Central European countries on Tuesday expressed their solidarity with Poland in an ongoing migration crisis on its eastern border with Belarus, and urged the European Union to increase its support for the protection of the bloc’s external […]
(AP) The authoritarian leader of Belarus on Monday sharply criticized the European Union for its refusal to hold talks on the influx of migrants on the country’s border with Poland. Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko urged Germany to accommodate about 2,000 migrants who […]
(BBC) Belarus’s authoritarian leader has told the BBC it is “absolutely possible” his forces helped migrants cross into Poland but denies they were invited. Thousands of migrants, mainly from the Middle East, have been trying to get into the EU via Belarus […]
(AP) Hundreds of Iraqis returned home Thursday from Belarus after abandoning their hopes of reaching the European Union — a repatriation that came after tensions at Poland’s eastern border, where thousands of migrants became stuck in a cold and soggy forest. Many […]
(AFP) Belarus on Thursday said there were around 7,000 migrants in the ex-Soviet country, with around 2,000 of them camped on the border with EU member Poland. Thousands of mainly Middle Eastern migrants are camped around the border in what the West […]
(AP) Hundreds of migrants who were camped in the cold on the Poland-Belarus border have been moved to a nearby warehouse in Belarusian territory, reports said Wednesday, with some still harboring hopes of entering the European Union. The move came a day […]
(AP) Polish forces at the border with Belarus used water cannons and tear gas Tuesday against stone-throwing migrants, as Warsaw accused Belarusian authorities of giving smoke grenades and other weapons to those trying to cross the frontier. The events marked an escalation […]
(AFP) Aryan Wali Zellmi, a 25-year-old Iraqi Kurd, had tried twice to enter the European Union through Belarus. This time, he got stuck on the freezing border with Poland, joining hundreds in a crisis that the EU blames on Minsk. Zellmi is […]
(AP) European Union officials on Wednesday accused Belarus of state-sponsored “trafficking” of human lives by luring desperate migrants to the Polish border — the edge of the EU — where many are now stuck in makeshift camps in freezing weather. As the […]
(AP) Poland reinforced its border with Belarus with more riot police on Tuesday, a day after groups of migrants tried to storm through a razor-wire fence on the eastern frontier where thousands have camped on the Belarusian side in the tense standoff. […]
(AP) Hundreds if not thousands of migrants sought to storm the border from Belarus into Poland on Monday, cutting razor wire fences and using branches to try and climb over them. The siege escalated a crisis along the European Union’s eastern border […]
(Reuters) Lithuania has built the first stretches of a steel wall on its border with Belarus since migrants from the Middle East and other areas began entering from Belarus this year. The European Union accuses Belarus of deliberately encouraging the migrants to […]
(AP) German police said on Monday that they registered more than 5,000 unauthorized border crossings last month by people who had arrived from Belarus, marking a significant uptick in the number of arrivals through a new and politically sensitive migration route. Federal […]
(AFP) Polish lawmakers on Friday gave the go-ahead to build a controversial wall on the EU member’s eastern border with Belarus, in response to an unprecedented wave of migrants, mostly from the Middle East. The wall will cost an estimated 353 million […]
(AP) European Union leaders pledged on Friday to “keep up the pressure” on Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko to halt the flow of migrants from his country and raised the prospect of new sanctions amid calls by some bloc members to build walls […]
(AP) European Union foreign ministers looked at ways on Monday to stop the illegal migration into the 27-nation bloc from neighboring Belarus, including stopping companies from leasing jets to Belarusian airline Belavia. The EU has accused the government of Belarusian President Alexander […]
(AP) Germany’s foreign minister says airlines that fly would-be migrants to the European Union to Belarus should ask themselves whether they want to be part of a “smuggling ring” run by the country’s authoritarian leader. Foreign Minister Heiko Maas’ comments Thursday to […]
(AP) German authorities said Wednesday that the number of migrants arriving in the country via Poland and Belarus has gone up during the months that several European Union nations have accused the Belarusian government of encouraging people to cross into the EU […]
(AP) The European Union should take “specific actions” to stop Belarus “pushing” migrants across its border into Polish territory, Poland’s president said on Thursday. President Andrzej Duda didn’t outline what those actions might be, but said he’s hoping for assistance beyond what […]
(AP) Belarus’ exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya on Wednesday urged the global community to stop a “humanitarian catastrophe” which she said is being created by the Belarusian regime facilitating largescale migration into the European Union. Thousands of migrants from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan […]
(AP) Lawmakers in Belarus have voted to suspend an agreement with the European Union obliging the ex-Soviet nation to take back migrants that crossed its territory into the EU. The vote late Monday in the upper house of the Belarusian parliament formalizes […]
(AP) Two United Nations agencies requested access Tuesday to asylum-seekers stranded at Belarus’s border with Poland and Lithuania, after four migrants were found dead in the area. The International Organization for Migration and the U.N. Refugee Agency called on the governments involved […]
(AP) Poland is sending 500 additional army troops and special vehicles to its border with Belarus to strengthen it against increasing migrant pressures which the government says is orchestrated by Belarus and Russia to destabilize the European Union. “We are dealing with […]
(AP) The prime ministers of Poland and Lithuania said Friday that tighter security at their borders with Belarus was the best way to ease pressure from migrant inflows there, as they expect what they called a “hybrid attack” from Belarus to continue. […]
(AFP) German Chancellor Angela Merkel appealed to Belarus to help migrants instead of trying to send them across the border into the European Union, branding these attempts “hybrid attacks.” On a visit to Poland, Merkel addressed the influx of migrants — mostly […]
(Reuters) Lithuania on Thursday sent five Afghan migrants back to Belarus shortly after they had crossed the border despite the European Court of Human Rights earlier saying they should be allowed to stay. The migrants had tried to enter Lithuania unsuccessfully at […]
(AP) Poland’s parliament voted Monday to uphold the state of emergency along the border with Belarus that was declared last week amid migration pressure. The vote came after Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told lawmakers that the country faces a threat from Russia […]
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