Belarus

[Stuart Galbraith]

Wait till someone bulldozes it down again. As you see from that report, all it does is buy time, it wont stand up to a concerted assault.

These were some good explanations for what Lukashenko is trying to achieve.

 

[wilhelm]

Things must be slow at the vacuum cleaner assembly plant.

The propaganda campaign is once again in full swing.

Edited November 9, 2021 by wilhelm

[Stuart Galbraith]

You are perfectly free to post your own links. Or is Russia Today lost for words for once?

There are some good videos taken by the Polish MOD on here.

https://news.sky.com/story/germany-urges-eu-unity-amid-growing-tensions-as-migrants-camp-on-poland-belarus-border-12464576

 

[bojan]

Funny how every usual suspect was silent when Turkey was doing same, if not worse.

 

Edited November 9, 2021 by bojan

[sunday]

Morocco too.

[BansheeOne]

Actually Erdogan's attempt last year was discussed, on and off, over six pages of the Syria thread. Morocco even had its own thread, if rather short due to the brevity of events. 

[Stuart Galbraith]

Plenty of discussion of the same problem coming via the Med, and the English Channel too. The only difference there was it wasnt likely to cause a war. Well, in absolute fairness senior Tories DID try to have a war...

[Burncycle360]

Lukashenko sounds like a bond villain

[Stuart Galbraith]

I think a Bond villain would have a better Tailor.

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

 

[Roman Alymov]

23 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

 

EU is paying key NATO member and long-time EU candidate Turkey. Why not to pay Belarus? This people now storming Poland border were thrown out of their native lands in Iraq and Afghanistan by US&NATO wars, why Belarus is to pay for the consequences (and since Belorussia is subsidized by Russia – actually paid by Russia)?

[Mistral]

3 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Plenty of discussion of the same problem coming via the Med, and the English Channel too. The only difference there was it wasnt likely to cause a war. Well, in absolute fairness senior Tories DID try to have a war...

You realy have no idea dont you.

All of the below went on for weeks in 2020 and not a single statement from the EU besides the usual solidary nonsense. If you exclude the statement were they promised to give Turkey several billions to please stop...

So why should not Loukashenko get on the money train?  Love that there are 40 flights a week from Turkish airlines to Bellorussia the last few weeks, tourism must be booming there!

Video of Turkish police escorting by force people to cross border with Greece.

Turkish police firing teargas over the border while trying to tear down the fence, plenty of those actualy

My favorite. Turkish border armored vehicle funded by EU funds trying to tear down the border fence

And finally, the Turkish frigate with a new ventilation whole while crossing the path of a Greek frigate.  That was a bit later, but show the mentality of dictatorships.

Like I said you realy have no idea what you are talking about but then again Turkey seems to be a favorite country for the UK gov. being a beacon of democracy in the region...

[Stuart Galbraith]

We weren't talking about the EU, we were talking about members of this grate site whom were implied to be disinterested. I remember talking about it, don't recall your good self though.

What does all this have to do with Belarus? Nothing. It's just one more example of you silly buggers going off on a tangent, and ignoring there are now elements of 4 Polish Divisions in the border of Belarus. Kind of more difficult for the poles to go to war with Turkey.

And they call me clueless. Jesus wept.

[Stuart Galbraith]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-59226226

Poland's Prime Minister has accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of being behind a migrant crisis at Belarus's border with Poland.

Mateusz Morawiecki said that Belarus's authoritarian leader, a close ally of Mr Putin, is orchestrating the crisis, but "it has its mastermind in Moscow".

At least 2,000 migrants are stuck at the border in freezing conditions.

Belarus's leader Alexander Lukashenko denies claims it is sending people over the border in revenge for EU sanctions.

Video footage shows crowds of people on the Belarusian side of a barbed-wire border fence with Poland. Some try to force their way through using bolt cutters, tree trunks and group force, while Polish guards fend them off.

Many of the migrants are young men but there are also women and children, mostly from the Middle East and Asia. They are camping in tents just inside Belarus, trapped between Polish guards on one side, and Belarusian guards on the other, unable to enter Poland or retreat back into Belarus.

Overnight temperatures at the border have slumped below zero and several people have already died in recent weeks.

How Belarus is helping ‘tourists’ break into the EU

EU accuses Belarus of gangster-style migrant abuse

Poland blocks hundreds of migrants at Belarus border

Speaking on Tuesday at an emergency parliamentary session after visiting troops on the border, Mr Morawiecki said: "This attack which Lukashenko is conducting has its mastermind in Moscow, the mastermind is President Putin."

He accused the Russian and Belarusian leaders of trying to destabilise the European Union - which the two countries are not part of - by allowing migrants to travel through Belarus and enter the bloc.

Mr Morawiecki described the situation as "a new type of war in which people are used as human shields", and said Poland was dealing with a "stage play" which is designed to create chaos in the EU.

He added that it was the first time in 30 years that Poland's border security had been so "brutally attacked".

Poland has deployed extra troops to the border, and warned of a possible "armed" escalation, fearing that Belarus might try to provoke an incident.

Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, which are all part of the EU, have seen a surge in the number of people trying to enter their countries illegally from Belarus in recent months. On Tuesday, Lithuania declared a state of emergency on its border with Belarus, which will come into effect at midnight.

Poland has seen the most arrivals, especially around its major border crossing at Kuznica.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Report here that Belarusians have been giving amphetamine s to migrants. That's unconfirmed.

Edited November 9, 2021 by Stuart Galbraith

[bd1]

3 hours ago, Burncycle360 said:

Lukashenko sounds like a bond villain

Lukashenko´s nickname is ´Potato Ghaddafi´, which does not give him enough clout to be a Bond villain

[Stuart Galbraith]

There is a stunning resemblance to Mr Potato Head now you mention it.

[urbanoid]

2 hours ago, Roman Alymov said:

EU is paying key NATO member and long-time EU candidate Turkey. Why not to pay Belarus? This people now storming Poland border were thrown out of their native lands in Iraq and Afghanistan by US&NATO wars, why Belarus is to pay for the consequences (and since Belorussia is subsidized by Russia – actually paid by Russia)?

Guess I could find reasons not to pay Turkey back then and even more reasons not to pay Belarus now. First thing, Turkey didn't engineer everything from the beginning, Belarus did, it was Minsk looking for migrants, flying them in and sending them West.

I hope we close the border totally, absolutely no movement of people, goods, anything.

[ex2cav]

6 hours ago, bojan said:

Funny how every usual suspect was silent when Turkey was doing same, if not worse.

 

+1.

I think the Turks "allowed" a million plus into Europe, which didn't have much of a response. Excepting Merkel, who if I remember was tearfully waving them in. I think we are talking about hundreds or a few thousand now.

I  feel bad for Poland, Hungary, and the Baltic states. There is much ado on this forum, and some in the press, but I don't know if much will happen. The Poles want to keep their identity and want to keep the migrants out. IMO they are doing the right thing for themselves and Europe by not letting them in. They could just as easily wave the migrants in then bus them to the German border and kick them out there. Ultimately, they are still stuck between two powers--- if you believe that Putin is masterminding all of this. 

They should just build a wall, a moat,  dragon's teeth something within their border away from the TV cameras so they can handle it.

If the Poles or Baltic states don't get monetary or physical assistance from Nato or the EU they could try and broker their own deal with the Belas--however, this might be part of the goal on the Eastern side of the border. 

[Ssnake]

1 hour ago, ex2cav said:

Excepting Merkel, who if I remember was tearfully waving them in.

Maybe you "remember" it like that, but reality was of course more nuanced, and you could know that if you bothered to actually check the facts, which of course you won't.

[Simon Tan]

I am surprised Baltics and Polen are not given stern lectures by USia for being so racist.

[ex2cav]

https://www.dw.com/en/merkel-germany-refugees/a-54769229

Angela Merkel, "We can do this."

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/22/opinion/angela-merkel-refugees-germany.html

The new york times lauds Merkel not closing the border at the time.

I am not German and don't live in Germany. I didn't mean any insult when I  posted the above. I also recognize what is seen in the foreign press (US press to us) may not capture what is really going on in a far away place. That said, we are dealing with much the same in the US. Though here, our leaders are being less than truthful by not acknowledging what is happening, then when caught, say it is good that it happened. I was astonished that Merkel gave the impression  that all those people were allowed, which would seem to me would encourage more to come. I am surprised there wasn't more political fallout from the other countries who don't feel the same, and the migrants would be welcome to travel to their nations once in.

That said, the numbers that are on the border with Poland don't seem to be that heavy. Yet. Again, they likely do not want to encourage more. 

[Ssnake]

In a press conference weeks before the major events, the minister of the interior warned about a developing refugee crisis that up to 800,000 refugees might enter the EU through Greece - a probably accurate assessment at the time - which was then misconstrued in social media by human traffickers that a contingent of 800,000 refugees had been reserved and that they were all invited.

Which of course wasn't true, but the situation quickly developed a dynamic of its own where several hundred thousand Syrians simply started to march from Greece to the Austrian border (and from there, eventually, to Germany). Merkel was confronted with an "impossible situation" at the time where no good choices were available except putting a good face to the situation. In a sense she displayed a rare example of leadership in the attempt to inspire confidence in the German nation that this was a challenge that could be mastered, and was successful in that.

But the reality is that Merkel and her government were largely driven by events that left them little choice. That in total 2 million of them came is a striking example of the dynamics inherent to a refugee crisis fueled by war and amplified by social media as a decentralized propaganda tool.

 

 

You couldn't walk them back. Border security wasn't ready to close the border in its entirety. You couldn't fly or ship them back to Greece, or Syria for that matter, so I still challenge any critic to what the alternatives should have been, including all the consequnces from a possible alternative course of action. Whoever says that the borders could have been closed and protected by force should openly admit that this would have meant a mobilization of a Bundeswehr already stretched to the limit by its missions in Afghanistan and elsewhere, machine gun nests all over the place, the willingness to to shoot women and children, or to leave them to starve and/or freeze to death in Hungary. It probably would have been the beginning of the end of the European Union (which I suspect to be the true ultimate goal of some Merkel critics).

One can want all that, but then let's at least be honest and open about it so everybody can clearly see assess the differences of the options available.

 

In the end, we could do this. Merkel was right in the sense that it was within Germany's capability to integrate two million refugees. It wasn't easy and not few people doubted that it was possible, but today more than 50% of the Syrians that came have learned to speak German, found jobs, pay taxes. The predicted wave of domestic terrorism hasn't materialized (the AfD assures us that it'll do so any moment, however). We had a string of incidents, yes, but all in all it wasn't remotely as bad as most critics predicted it would be. That's not to say that anyone in Germany wants an encore (except for a handful of die-hard pro-refugee activists). And I think that most European states are better prepared now, except, ironically, Poland which successfully hid behind the border walls of others, adamant in its position that there should be no regulation to distribute migrants proportionally within the European Union.

I don't expect too much time to pass until they start whistling a different tune.

[Stuart Galbraith]

https://www.reuters.com/video/watch/idOVF30SRXN

The European Union is close to imposing more sanctions on Belarus, targeting some 30 individuals and entities including the foreign minister and Belarusian airline Belavia, with approval as early as next week, three EU diplomats said. Gloria Tso reports.

[Stuart Galbraith]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/lithuania-border-camps-in-state-of-emergency-over-migrants-from-belarus/ar-AAQvbD7?ocid=BingNewsSearch

 

 

KAPCIAMIESTIS, Lithuania (Reuters) - Lithuania's parliament on Tuesday declared a state of emergency at the country's border with Belarus and at camps hosting migrants who arrived from there, a tally of votes showed.

The state of emergency, which begins at midnight local time (2200 GMT) in the night of Tuesday to Wednesday and is to last a month, allows border guards to use "mental coercion" and "proportional physical violence" to prevent migrants from entering Lithuania.

EU member states accuse Belarus of encouraging illegal migrants from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa to cross the border into the EU in revenge for sanctions already slapped on Minsk over human rights abuses.

Lithuania's declaration bans all travel to within five kilometres (three miles) of the Belarus border, unless allowed by border guards. Mobile phones could be taken away from migrants and public gatherings near the border and in the camps could be forbidden.

"The state of emergency is needed to use ... extraordinary measures to remove the serious threat posed to society by the massive influx of foreigners," the motion before parliament said.

The measures would also deter anyone seeking to aid migrants, Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte told parliament.

"People who live, and work (near the border) will be able to continue to do so, but people who want to get there to, for instance, pick up the migrants and ferry them to another territory - it will be harder for them to do so," Simonyte said.

Lithuania on Monday said it was moving troops to the Belarus border to prepare for a possible influx of migrants.