Putin brushes off Merkel’s call to stop Belarus on migrants

Bloomberg

President Vladimir Putin brushed off a request by Chancellor Angela Merkel to exercise his influence over Belarus as the European Union prepares a fresh raft of sanctions against the regime in Minsk for channeling thousands of migrants to the bloc’s border.
With footage of clashes on Poland’s frontier with Belarus and EU leaders accusing the country’s president, Aleksander Lukashenko, of engaging in human-trafficking, the dispute between the Russian and German leaders underscored an escalating crisis.
“The Belarusian regime’s exploitation of migrants against the European Union is inhumane and completely unacceptable,” Merkel told Putin in a phone call on Wednesday, her spokesman said. The Russian leader told Merkel that the EU should discuss the issue with Lukashenko, according to a Kremlin readout.
The long-brewing conflict between the EU and the former Soviet republic has transformed into a migration crisis, with authorities in Minsk ushering thousands of migrants — most of whom flew to Belarus — to the Polish border, where many aimed to get well beyond.
The EU seeks to finalise details of a package of sanctions, including restrictions on Belarus’s national airline, Belavia, and 29 individuals connected to the regime, according to EU diplomats. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki called for an emergency summit for the 27-member bloc.
Polish troops deployed tear gas to prevent the migrants from entering EU territory, a dangerous prospect for asylum seekers as an approaching winter in Europe’s north pushes nighttime temperatures well below freezing.
Poland estimated that 4,000 migrants may be in the forests along the border, and even more on route to the frontier area from Belarus’s capital.
The EU is also considering targeting companies that lease airplanes involved in shuttling migrants, although officials are debating whether penalties would apply to current contracts or just future ones, one of the officials said. The bloc is also mulling sanctioning the country’s insurance sector, the official added.
A European Commission spokesperson declined to comment.
Poland’s Morawiecki is planning to raise his interest in an EU summit with European Council President Charles Michel, who is visiting Warsaw on Wednesday.
Polish border guards said that a “larger” group of people managed to break through border fortifications but that they were all apprehended and expelled to Belarus.
Radio RMF reported that about 150 of the 200 migrants that entered Poland have been detained.
Michel said that the EU is discussing various other responses to the crisis.
“We have opened the debate on the EU financing of physical border infrastructure,” he said in a speech
in Berlin. “This must be settled rapidly because Polish and Baltic borders are EU borders.”
In Lithuania, another EU member which shares a border with Belarus, parliament declared a state of emergency near the frontier.
Ukraine, a non-EU neighbour, is also deploying more personnel and equipment to its frontier with Belarus, Deputy Interior Minister Yevhen Yenin was cited as saying by news website Rbc.ua.