Aleksandr Lukashenko raises the bar. Cornered in the face of imminent new sanctions for the use of migrants “as ammunition” against the European Union on the border with Poland, the Belarusian dictator is launching a new threat: blocking the transit of Russian gas to a Europe already at the taken with dear energy. “We supply heat to Europe and they threaten to close the border. And if we stop the supply of natural gas there
,” he speculated defiantly, referring to the Yamal-Europe pipeline that carries the fuel to Poland and Germany.
“We do not let ourselves be intimidated”, was the immediate reply from Brussels through the Commissioner for the Economy, Paolo Gentiloni, while the 27 go ahead in defining the new measures against Minsk that will be on Monday on the table of foreign ministers. On gas, Lukashneko “bluffs”, says Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya: stopping it “would be more harmful for him than for the EU”.
Vladimir Putin once again takes sides alongside the Minsk regime, whom Warsaw considers the real “instigator” of the crisis on the Polish border. In the second phone call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in just two days, the head of the Kremlin called on the Union to re-establish contacts with Belarus instead of continuing to isolate it. The US also raises the alarm about a suspected increase in Russian troops on the border with Ukraine, fearing that Moscow could take advantage of the chaos on the European borders to replicate the 2014 invasion of Crimea. Washington yesterday asked Russia directly for this. , as reported by the Pentagon, also sending the alert to the European chancelleries. “We do what we can to talk to the Belarusian authorities.” But Lukashenko ”
Measures against 29 Belarusian entities and individuals (including airline Belavia, accused of bringing migrants to Belarus for the sole purpose of “hurling” them against the EU border) are under consideration in a new package of sanctions after those they have already hit the regime for the elections, considered fraudulent, which re-crowned Lukashenko two years ago. According to the German minister Heiko Maas, the sanctions should go even further, and reach the transit countries, complicit in Lukashenko’s “inhuman activities”. Like Turkey, against which the Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki had pointed the finger. “To say that the refugee crisis originates from Turkey is shameful. It is a lie”, President Erdogan cut short. claiming credit for hosting 5 million refugees. Meanwhile, the situation at the border remains dramatic for the thousands of refugees, mostly Iraqi Kurds, amassed in the woods along the barbed wire.
In the night between Wednesday and Thursday, another 150 people tried to force the border and were rejected, the Polish government said. After days of siege, the UN agencies and the Red Cross have at least managed to bring basic aid. At the same time, thousands of far-right demonstrators – also members of Forza Nuova were present – amidst imposing security measures. “Shoot! Shoot!” Was one of the slogans chanted by the march and addressed to the border guards deployed in Sokolka, near the border. In December Matteo Salvini will also go to Poland, invited by the leader of Pis (Law and Justice, in government) Jaroslaw Kaczynski, to talk about “control of the territory and the risks associated with illegal immigration.
