March 22, Pozirk. Poland manages to thwart almost all of the irregular border crossings by third-country foreigners via Belarus, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has told journalists while visiting a border guard unit in Krynki near the shared border with Belarus.
“Ninety-eight attempts out of 100 to illegally cross the border are prevented thanks to the determined attitude of our soldiers, Border Guard and police,” gov.pl reports, quoting him as saying. “We are mobilizing Europe to treat [protection of] this border as a common duty.”
Warsaw received another endorsement of its Eastern Shield project, designed to reinforce the border with Belarus and Russia, providing for a military component of border protection, which is a primary task for Europe along with NATO, the politician stressed.
Currently, 11,000 troops, border guards and police officers are patrolling the shared border with Belarus, Tusk added.
The flow of people desperate to get to the European Union surged in spring 2021 after Alaksandar Łukašenka, angered by EU sanctions, had indicated that Minsk would not prevent asylum seekers from Africa and Asia from using Belarus as a route to the EU.
Later, Łukašenka claimed that foreigners were traveling to the EU because they were “invited there.”
Since the start 2025, the EU has not allowed at least 2,500 people to cross illegally via Belarus with 2,100 crossings reported by Poland alone, according to Pozirk’s analysis of border guards’ data.
Last year, the EU thwarted at least 36,291 irregular border crossings at its shared border with Belarus.
Belarus’ western neighbors call the migration crisis a “hybrid attack” orchestrated by Minsk and Moscow.
