Putin: Russia Ready to Help Resolve Migrant Crisis on Belarusian-Polish Border

14.11.2021 17:26

Putin: Russia Ready to Help Resolve Migrant Crisis on Belarusian-Polish Border

Tens of thousands of migrants, primarily from the Middle East and Africa, have travelled to Belarus in recent months in hopes of making their way across the border into neighbouring Poland and the Baltic states and further west. Minsk has stressed that it no longer has the resources to combat the flow thanks to crushing European sanctions.

Russia is ready to do everything in its power to help resolve the migration crisis on the Belarusian-Polish border, President Vladimir has announced.

"We are ready to contribute to this in every way possible, if, of course, something will depend on us," Putin said, speaking in an interview with Russian television on Sunday.

"I learned about what's taking place on the Polish-Belarusian border in the media. I never discussed this issue with [Belarusian President Alexander] Lukashenko before. I spoke to him twice, only after this crisis began," Putin said, when asked to comment on claims made by some Western officials and media that Russia is responsible for the crisis.

"Therefore, when we hear statements or allegations in our direction, I would like to tell everyone: deal with your internal problems, and don't try to pass questions which should be resolved by your own appropriate departments onto someone else," Putin stressed.

Commenting on allegations that Russia's flag carrier airline Aeroflot has had a role in transporting migrants to Belarus, the Russian president insisted that the company was not knowingly involved.

"They themselves created the conditions for thousands and hundreds of thousands of people to travel their way. And now they're looking to find the guilty party in order to absolve themselves of responsibility for the events," Putin said. "What does Aeroflot have to do with it? Has even one Aeroflot plane transported anyone? I have no idea, but, possibly, someone could have used some kind of planes and come through third countries. What do we have to do with anything? I'll repeat: this is an attempt to remove one's own responsibility for those events which are currently taking place."

The situation on Belarus's frontier with Poland, Latvia and Lithuania deteriorated sharply on 8 November after several thousand migrants arrived at the border with Poland and set up camp there, with some attempting to make their way into the European Union nation and travel further west, presumably to Germany. Brussels has blamed Minsk for the escalation of the situation, with some EU countries demanding fresh sanctions against Belarus. President Lukashenko has said that the West's own policies - including decades of military interventions in the Middle East and North Africa, caused the current crisis, and added that previous rounds of EU sanctions against Belarus have drained his country's ability to control migration flows.