Belarus reportedly uses Syrian and Iraqi migrants against Lithuania

For several years, Turkish President RT Erdogan used the threat of releasing waves of migrants from Syria, Iraq and more generally, from the entire Middle East, towards European coasts, in order to make Brussels and European chancelleries bend. . This strategy, which allowed Ankara to negotiate a €6 billion compensation agreement to keep these migrants on its soil. Obviously, the method has been emulated, since according to Lithuanian Interior Minister Agnė Bilotaitė, Minsk would now employ a similar method to respond to European sanctions and in particular to the support provided by Lithuania to Belarusian opponents in exile. But where Erdogan brandished the threat of migrants entering Turkey without the approval of the country's authorities to largely flee the fighting in Syria, the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, would have organized a real system to put pressure on his neighbor.

As one can easily imagine, the Syrian and Iraqi migrants present in the Turkish camps or around Baghdad do not envisage, at first glance, going to Belarus. Furthermore, access to the country is difficult, having no border with the Middle East, neither by land nor by sea. According to the Lithuanian press, they would be directly “recruited” by Belarusian agents in Turkey and Iraq, in being offered a plane ticket to Minsk, a visa, and the promise of being able to cross to Europe via the Lithuanian border. Once they arrive in the Belarusian capital, they must then wait for a signal from the authorities who will tell them the meeting place to cross the border, with the help of Belarusian border guards.

For the Belarusian authorities, the country's border guards have simply been instructed to no longer prevent "migrants" and traffickers from crossing to Lithuania, in retaliation for the sanctions imposed by the Europeans on the regime of Alexander Lukashenko. In fact, this is obviously a large-scale manipulation, aimed at destabilizing a member of NATO and the European Union. Furthermore, it is difficult to see how such a mechanism could have been implemented by Minsk without the support of other powers, such as Russia, Iran and Turkey. What's more, the operation would be financially profitable for Alexander Lukashenko himself, who owns the airline which operates charter flights from Baghdad and Istanbul, while each passenger is charged €1500 per flight. Remember that a Minsk-Istanbul return flight costs on average between €300 and €600 on regular Belavia or Turkish Airlines lines.

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