Belarus taking steps to combat illegal migration, official claims

January 24, Pozirk. Belarusian border guards have been “taking certain steps” to combat illegal migration, Kanstancin Mołastaŭ, chief of the State Border Committee, said in an interview broadcast by Belarus 1 on January 23.

Anyway, he linked the current decrease in illegal migration to cold weather and reports of migrants’ deaths at the border between Belarus and the European Union.

“People see this and make fewer attempts to cross the state border illegally,” he said.

Since the start of the migration crisis in the spring 2021, foreigners have been trying to cross from Belarus into the EU illegally almost every day, except for nine days, eight of them this month.

Pozirk’s analysis of daily stats found that tension at the Belarusian-EU border decreased significantly at the end of 2023 and in early 2024. This month, the EU recorded 76 illegal border crossings compared with as many as 1,989 in January 2023, although the weather was roughly the same.

The migration crisis at the Belarusian-EU border started in spring 2021 after Alaksandar Łukašenka, angered by EU sanctions, had indicated that Minsk would not prevent migrants from Africa and Asia from using Belarus as a route to the EU. It escalated in November 2021, with hundreds of migrants storming the Polish border. The Baltic states and Poland accused Belarusian authorities of creating the trouble, while the latter blamed the crisis and migrants’ deaths on the West.