Belarus - Page 6

Poland and Lithuania, battling border crises reportedly engineered by the Lukashenko regime in Belarus, are under pressure from the United Nations and the Council of Europe to let the migrants in.

Poland is following Hungary, Lithuania, and Greece in building a “wall” to stop a surge of predominantly African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian migrants, thought to have been orchestrated by the Lukashenko regime in neighbouring Belarus.

The European Union has accused Belarus of attacking the bloc with mainly Iraqi migrants by forcing them to cross the borders into Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia.

Poland has deployed hundreds of troops and is laying barbed wire along its border with Belarus to stop the arrival of migrants.

An MP has told Breitbart News that her Lithuania will protect the “border of democracy” from a weaponised flow of African and Middle Eastern migrants from Belarus.

So far this year, more than 4,000 asylum-seekers from 40 countries, most of them Iraqi, have illegally crossed from Belarus into Lithuania. That’s 50 times more than during all of 2020.

The Polish government has claimed it has seen a record number of illegal immigrants cross from Belarus, most likely originating from Afghanistan and Iraq.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Belarus’s border protection agency said Friday that it tightened control along its border with Lithuania to prevent Lithuanian authorities from sending migrants back to Belarus. Lithuania, a member of the European Union, has faced an influx

 Lithuanian Interior Minister Agne Bilotaite has ordered border guards to repel, with force if needed, illegal migrants as the European Union border agency has claimed Belarus is helping illegals cross.

Belarusian athletes Yana Maksimava and Andrey Krauchanka, a married couple currently living in Germany, announced on Tuesday they will not return to their home country. “You can lose not just your freedom but your life,” Maksimava said of the Russia-backed tyranny in Belarus on her Instagram account.

A Belarusian activist who ran a group in Ukraine helping Belarusians fleeing persecution was found dead, local police said.

Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, a 24-year-old Olympic sprinter, took refuge in the Polish embassy in Tokyo on Monday after criticizing her coaches and subsequently fearing the repressive leftist regime in her native Belarus would endanger her life and that of her family.

EU member Lithuania has seen more than 2,000 arrivals since the start of the year across the border from Belarus.

The government of Iraq has pledged to investigate an alleged “plan to smuggle Iraqis into Europe” as the EU border state of Lithuania experiences a mini migrant crisis along its frontier with Belarus.

European Commissioner Ylva Johansson has accused the Belarusian government of blackmailing the European Union and orchestrating mass migration across its border with the bloc.

Far-left MP Claudia Webbe apparently stumped herself by her own question as she attempted to grill Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab.

EU will approve a fresh set of sanctions against scores of officials in Belarus and measures aimed at hurting the country´s economy.

Dissident Belarusan journalist Roman Protasevich, kidnapped by the Belarusan state when it hijacked a commercial airliner on May 23, appeared on Belarusan state television on Thursday praising dictator Alexander Lukashenko as a man with “balls of steel.”

A dissident on trial in Belarus for his involvement in protests against the regime stabbed himself in the throat while in court, saying he feared retribution against his friends and family unless he pleaded guilty, Belarusian outlet Narodnya Naviny Vitsebska reported.

Belarusian blogger and opposition leader Roman Protasevich appeared in a video on Monday in which he disclosed that he was in Belarusian government custody and confessed to “having organized mass unrest in the city of Minsk,” according to a translation from Agence France-Presse.

European airlines began skirting Belarus on Tuesday after the ex-Soviet nation forced the diversion of an airliner to arrest a journalist.

Several countries in Europe have condemned the government of Belarus for diverting a Ryanair flight in its airspace to arrest a dissident journalist on board.

BRUSSELS (AP) – Western outrage grew and the European Union threatened more sanctions Monday over the forced diversion of a plane to Belarus in order to arrest an opposition journalist in a dramatic gambit that some said amounted to state terrorism or sheer piracy.

Boris Johnson’s government is scrapping the ‘Pick for Britain’ drive for British farm workers and increasing migrant recruitment to 30,000, with hundreds to come from the likes of Belarus and the Russian Federation.

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned other nations not to cross Russia’s “red lines” in his 17th annual state of the union address, delivered to the Russian parliament Wednesday.

(AFP) — Three men went on trial in Paris on Monday over the bombing of a French military camp in Ivory Coast in 2004, which killed nine soldiers and sparked furious reprisals by the French, causing a deep rift in Franco-Ivorian relations.

A Belarusian lawyer working for dissident Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) claims Russian police forcibly removed him from the country, binding him with handcuffs and tossing a sack over his head before driving him across the border and handing him over to Belarusian authorities, Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty (RFERL) reported Tuesday.

A 35-year-old man has been hospitalized in grave condition after setting himself on fire in Minsk’s Independence Square on Friday, the Polish news channel Belsat TV reported.

Alexander Lukashenko, the only leader Belarus has known in its brief history, said on Friday that he will not be in power, for the first time in 26 years, once a new national constitution is adopted.

A power plant in Belarus that went online Saturday shut down less than 24 hours after its inauguration, the country’s Energy Ministry announced Monday, to repair broken equipment.

Belarus began operating its first nuclear power plant on Tuesday in the western town of Astravets, located just 30 miles from Lithuania’s capital.

Poles in America have urged Joe Biden to correct his “false” and “harmful” comments about Poland at a recent town hall, where he appeared to lump the country in with Belarus and other “totalitarian regimes”.

Joe Biden has triggered a huge diplomatic row with NATO members Hungary and Poland after appearing to lump them in with Belarus as “totalitarian regimes”, with the Hungarian government demanding answers on his family’s alleged corruption in Ukraine.

Former Vice President Joe Biden was asked about foreign policy during his ABC News town hall on Thursday night. His response included trivializing the historic Middle Eastern peace deals brokered by President Donald Trump and repeating a debunked New York Times article that claimed Trump ignored Russia paying bounties for dead American soldiers.

Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to get inoculated against the Chinese coronavirus in order to safely visit the South Korean capital of Seoul — which has been hit hard by the global pandemic — Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters Tuesday.

In the Belarusian capital of Minsk on Sunday, roughly 100,000 people turned out for the 50th consecutive day of anti-governmental protests in the country.