Poland PM blames Russia’s Putin for migrant crisis

Poland’s Prime Minister has accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of being behind a migrant crisis at Belarus’s border with Poland

Prime Minister of Poland Mateusz Morawiecki has stated that Belarus’s authoritarian leader who remains a close ally of Russian President Putin, is orchestrating the crisis, but “it has its mastermind in Moscow”.

At least 2,000 migrants are right now stuck at the border in freezing temperatures.

Belarus’s leader Alexander Lukashenko denies claims it’s sending people over the border in revenge for EU sanctions.

Video footage shows crowds of people on the Belarusian side of a barbed-wire border fence with Poland.

Some migrants attempt to force their way through using bolt cutters, tree trunks and group force – while Polish guards fend them off with what repots claim to be tear gas.

Many of the migrants are young men but there are also women and children, mostly from the Middle East and Asia. They are camping in tents just inside Belarus, trapped between Polish guards on one side, and Belarusian guards on the other.

Overnight temperatures at the border have slumped below zero and several people have already died in the freezing conditions over the past few weeks.

Mr Morawiecki on Tuesday stated that “This attack which Lukashenko is conducting has its mastermind in Moscow, the mastermind is President Putin.”

The Polish leader accused the Russian and Belarusian leaders of trying to destabilise the European Union – which the two countries are not part of – by allowing migrants to travel through Belarus and enter the bloc.