Russia Sends Bombers To Fly Over Belarus After Poland Claims Moscow “Masterminded” Migrant Crisis

With the still chaotic and unraveling Belarus-Poland border situation becoming a full-blown crisis for the European Union, which is now threatening further sanctions on the Lukashenko government, the ex-Soviet Republic’s key powerful ally Russia is jumping into the fray.

The Kremlin has lashed out, saying it’s the European Union that’s to blame for the migrant crisis due its attempting to “strangle” Belarus. This as the EU is readying fresh sanctions, with plans to close a big part of the border altogether. Russia was specifically responding to Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s Tuesday comments saying the migrant crisis “has its mastermind in Moscow”.

Given that most of the migrants who on Monday and Tuesday sought to break across barbed-wire border fences (which was allegedly encouraged by Belarusian security forces) are from the Middle East, Moscow urged the West to look at the “big picture” of how it’s their own policies which created the crisis in the first place. 

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova gave the Kremlin’s official response, also after EU officials began pointing the finger at Russia for backing Lukashenko: “Let’s not pretend it started yesterday. The situation at the EU eastern border is just a part of the big picture. A failure to see it, to understand it and admit it – that’s what constitutes the twisting of facts and lying. Lying of the worst kind that can ever exist – lying to themselves,’” she said.

And further according to TASS:

There are many examples, the spokeswoman said. “The destruction of the Iraqi statehood, which happened due to the actions of the US administration and allied states, caused tectonic shifts in the region.

The West-sponsored ‘’Arab spring,’’ the NATO campaign against Libya, the interference of the collective West in the affairs of Syria and the support of international terrorism there and, most importantly, the emergence of ISIS (the former name of the IS terrorist group, which is banned in Russia) on the ruins of the Iraqi state – all that has led to a mass exodus of refugees and migrants from that part of the world to Europe…,” Zakharova said.

The ratcheting rhetoric, blame-game, and continued finger pointing is now resulting in more direct means of muscle-flexing as on Wednesday Russia sent a pair of long-range bombers over Belarus in coordination with Minsk. 

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko is warning that the unfurling migrant crisis on the Belarus-Poland border could ‘drag Russia into this maelstrom’ if any wrong step is made https://t.co/9IyXTWYGyL pic.twitter.com/Q7eK7tFuZc

— Reuters (@Reuters) November 9, 2021

“As migrants from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa made new attempts to break into Poland overnight, Moscow sent a further signal of support for its ally Belarus by dispatching two strategic bomber planes to patrol Belarusian airspace,” Reuters writes.

“The Tu-22M3 bombers helped test Belarus’s joint air defense system, RIA news agency quoted the defence ministry as saying in a statement that did not refer to the migrant crisis but served to underline the rise in tensions on NATO’s eastern frontier,” according to the report.

Poland blocks hundreds of migrants trying to enter the country at the Belarus borderhttps://t.co/1hVWJmmGNh pic.twitter.com/jOj7ratzj3

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) November 9, 2021

Meanwhile large migrant encampments are still present amid frigid temperatures a mere meters from the barbed-wire separation fence near Kuznica in Poland’s northeast, with a heavy Polish police and military presence on the other side, as the stand-off continues, and likely with more migrants en route – reportedly being encouraged and assisted by Belarusian authorities.