Poland starts work on £294m, 18ft-high metal wall topped with barbed wire along 115 miles of its border with Belarus after EU warned Lukashenko could stage a ‘hybrid attack’ by pushing migrants across the frontier
- Construction has begun on the wall which will stand 18ft high and cost £294m
- It will be topped with barbed wire, thermal cameras, motion sensors and alarms
- Poland’s right wing government argues the wall will benefit all EU countries
- Thousands of people have tried to cross into the EU from Belarus in recent weeks
- The EU accused Belarusian strongman Lukashenko of starting a migrant-fuelled ‘hybrid war’
Poland has begun construction on a 115 mile long wall which will run along its border to stop migrants being pushed across by Belarus in what the European Union described as a ‘hybrid attack’.
Construction workers with heavy machinery began work on the border wall this week in the village of Tolcza, near the closed border crossing of Kuznica in eastern Poland.
The barbed wire-topped metal wall is expected to cost £294 million, will stand 18ft-high and will come complete with thermal imaging cameras, CCTV, motion detectors and alarm systems.
It will run along more than half of the Polish-Belarusian border and is set for completion in June – a target date which requires two construction companies to work round the clock for months.
Kuznica, the area where the very first section of the wall is being erected, was the epicentre of last year’s migrant crisis, which saw thousands of migrants forced to brave freezing conditions as they attempted to fight their way across the border.
The EU says the migrants were being used by Belarus’s authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko to destabilise the 27-member bloc in retaliation for sanctions introduced after Lukashenko won an election widely thought to be rigged, before ruthlessly clamping down on protests.
Polish Police at a construction site of a border fence at the border with Belarus near the town of Tolcze, eastern Poland, 27 January 2022. Poland has started to build a barrier fence at the Polish Belarusian border
Workers construct a border wall along the Polish-Belarus border in Tolcze, Sokolka County, Podlaskie Voivodeship, in north-eastern Poland on January 27, 2022
The wall will run along more than half of the Polish-Belarusian border and is set for completion in June – a target date which requires two construction companies to work round the clock for months.
Polish soldiers and border guards are overseeing the security of the construction site. Kuznica, the area where the very first section of the wall is being erected, was the epicentre of last year’s migrant crisis, which saw thousands of migrants forced to brave freezing conditions as they attempted to fight their way across the border
Border guards and the military are patrolling the construction site in Kuznica, while excavators and cranes prepare the ground for the metal wall to be laid.
‘The Belarusian side is ready to do anything when it comes to provocations, so we have to be ready for any kind of event,’ said Major Arkadiusz Tomaszewski, deputy commander of the Border Guard in Kuznica, where clashes with migrants and Belarusian security officers took place last year.
European nations, facing a continuing inflow of migrants and refugees, are debating stepping up external border protection, tightening travel rules within Europe’s passport-free Schengen zone and introducing stricter rules for returning migrants to their countries of origin.
Pressure from thousands of migrants from the Middle East and Africa on Poland and Lithuania’s wooded borders with Belarus began in the summer, leading to clashes with Poland’s border guards.
The migrants are mostly heading for Germany.
Last year, Lithuania started building a wall on its frontier with Belarus, while Poland sealed its border with Belarus using razor wire, increased the number of guards and restricted access to the frontier.
During the 2015 inflow of migrants to the EU, Hungary drew condemnation when it built a wall on its borders with Croatia and Serbia to block migration routes.
But with the EU accusing Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko of engaging in a ‘hybrid war’ by forcing migrants into central and western Europe, Poland’s right wing government has thus far been able to argue the wall will serve all EU nations.
At least 12 migrants have died in the wooded border area in recent months and conditions have worsened as a result of sub-freezing winter temperatures.
The barbed wire-topped metal wall is expected to cost £294 million, will stand 18ft-high and will come complete with thermal imaging cameras, CCTV, motion detectors and alarm systems
During the 2015 inflow of migrants to the EU, Hungary drew condemnation when it built a wall on its borders with Croatia and Serbia to block migration routes. But with the EU accusing Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko (pictured) of engaging in a ‘hybrid war’ by forcing migrants into central and western Europe, Poland’s right wing government has thus far been able to argue the wall will serve all EU nations
Critics and environmentalists say the wall will fail to stop migrants, but will harm one of Europe’s last pristine woodlands, the Bialowieza forest.
Natalia Gebert, from the Grupa Granica (Border Group) that brings aid to migrants and asylum-seekers in Poland, says the wall ‘stops only the disabled, the weak, the sick’.
‘It doesn’t stop desperate people who are fleeing danger from trying to cross,’ she told the Associated Press.
She said that in the first three weeks of 2022 the group received requests for help from nearly 350 people, including 51 children.
Kalina Czwarnog of the Ocalenie (Deliverance) Foundation said the money for the wall could be better spent on ways of managing migration in a ‘humanitarian way and in line with international law’.
Kuznica, the area where the very first section of the wall is being erected, was the epicentre of last year’s migrant crisis (law enforcement officers pictured standing guard as a herd of migrants queue to receive food on the Belarusian-Polish border in the Grodno region, Belarus, November 19, 2021)
A border guard spokesperson, Anna Michalska, told Poland’s PAP news agency that the construction companies are committed to keeping the damage to the area’s forests to a minimum
A border guard spokesperson, Anna Michalska, told Poland’s PAP news agency that the construction companies are committed to keeping the damage to the area’s forests to a minimum.
‘The intention is for the damage to be as small as possible. Tree felling will be limited to the minimum required. The wall itself will be built along the border road.’
Meanwhile, journalists and reporters have struggled to gain access to the construction site after the government implemented further checkpoints preventing entry to the area.
Poland’s supreme court last week condemned the decision, declaring that the ban was not valid in the eyes of the law and that ‘there is no justification for admitting that this particular professional group represents a threat to steps taken’.
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