Shots were fired at the Belarusian-Polish border last week.
Just let that sink in for a moment.
Anna Michalska, a spokeswoman for the Polish Border Guards, said Belarusian forces fired shots across the European Union’s eastern border on October 7. She added that nobody was injured and stated that the shots were “probably” blanks.
Blanks or not, the fact that there was gunfire on the European Union’s eastern border represents a significant escalation in autocratic Belarusian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s ongoing hybrid war against the West. This escalation is happening as Belarus is becoming increasingly militarized and as Russia is steadily expanding its footprint in its smaller and strategically important neighbor.
Tensions between Belarus and the European Union have been mounting since Lukashenka retaliated to EU sanctions by manufacturing a migrant crisis on the country’s borders with EU member states Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. The Lukashenka regime has been flying migrants to Minsk from the Middle East and then spiriting them across the border. Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland have responded by erecting barbed wire fences and sending military forces to control the border.
General Roman Polko, the acting director of Poland’s Bureau of National Security, told wPolityce that in orchestrating a crisis on the border, Lukashenka was attempting to set off a “human bomb” against Poland and Europe. “Lukashenka naively believed that Europe would succumb to blackmail, lift all sanctions, and perhaps even provide some financial assistance just to stop the flow of migrants. However, he miscalculated,” Polko commented. “So now he is resorting to even more extreme measures.”