MINSK (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 12th November, 2022) Statements of officials from the EU countries neighboring Belarus on hybrid attacks and migration pressure exerted by Belarus contradict the reality, the Belarusian State Border Committee said on Saturday.
"If you look at statistics (provided by the European Border and Coast Guard Agency), the main route for illegal migrants into the EU is through Western Balkans with 60,000 illegal border crossings in 2021... Only 8,000 crossings were reported on the border with Belarus (and that's at the peak of the migration crisis). It means that all statements of neighboring EU states about hybrid attacks and migration pressure from Belarus contradict real facts," the message read.
The committee noted that the issue of the migration crisis was used by Poland as a pretext for bringing thousands of troops to the Belarusian border.
In 2021, Poland, Latvia and Lithuania registered a surge of illegal migrants from the middle East and Africa trying to cross over to the EU over the border from Belarus. Warsaw, Riga and Vilnius accused Belarus of actively promoting the migration route to the EU through its own borders in retaliation against EU sanctions. Belarus' border guards, in turn, reported that their counterparts in Latvia, Lithuania and Poland were forcibly pushing illegal migrants into Belarusian territory.
