Vladimir Putin drinks whey.
The Russian president is at the crossroads of a three-cushion billiard table, on the most enviable side of the deadlock in which Belarus and the European Union find themselves.
Brussels accuses Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko of orchestrating a migration crisis at the gates of the EU.
Several thousand migrants, mainly from the Middle East, are stranded in trying conditions on the border between Belarus and Poland.
European leaders accuse the autocrat, who has ruled the country with an iron fist since 1994, of having organized these migratory movements by issuing visas and chartering flights, in revenge for the Western sanctions imposed on his regime after the brutal repression of opponents who contested his re-election.
They also suspect him of wanting to send a "message" to Poland and Lithuania, guilty of harboring opponents in exile.
In a telephone interview with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the second in two days, Vladimir Putin said that the resolution of this "serious migratory crisis" required "the reestablishment of contacts between the countries of the EU and Belarus. ", According to a statement from the Kremlin.
Read also Migrant crisis on the Belarusian border: why Europe is powerless
But, at the end of patience, and because the EU suspects the strongman of Eastern Europe of supporting his Belarusian protege in his enterprise of destabilization, Berlin judged Thursday that it was "high time to pull the consequences ”of this crisis by strengthening sanctions against the Ukrainian regime.
A Europe-wide meeting is only scheduled for Monday, while the UN Security Council met behind closed doors on Thursday evening.
"A kind of masochistic inclination"
And not very diplomatic terms were used: Russia's deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Dmitry Polyanskiy, told reporters before the Council meeting that he thought his Western colleagues had "a kind of inclination. masochist, because it would be very courageous to raise before us this subject, which is a total shame for the EU ”. When asked if Russia or Belarus are helping move migrants to the Polish border, Polyanskiy replied: "No, absolutely not".
At the end of the meeting, Estonia, France, Ireland, Norway, the United States and Great Britain, in a joint text, “condemned the orchestrated instrumentalization of human beings whose Belarus' life and well-being have been politically endangered, with the aim of destabilizing neighboring countries and the European Union's external border and distracting attention from its own growing human rights violations. the man ".
However, in Minsk, Alexander Lukashenko threatened, in the event of new sanctions, to cut off the important Russian gas pipeline which passes through his Russian territory to supply Western Europe.
“What would happen if we cut the natural gas going out there?
», He launched.
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Thousands of migrants on the Polish border, the tone rises with Belarus
Lest the conflict continue along the border, Ukraine mobilizes its army. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who accused the Lukashenko regime of "state terrorism", said Thursday that his country was the target of a "new kind of war" with civilians used as "ammunition" . Warsaw claims Belarusian soldiers fired warning shots at least once when a large group of migrants attempted to cross the wooded area bordering the border. Aid workers, independent doctors and journalists are kept out. "Emergency humanitarian aid", including blankets, warm clothes and diapers, however, was able to be delivered on Thursday, a spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said.
According to Polish media, a 14-year-old Iraqi Kurdish boy froze to death on the Belarusian side.
According to the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza, ten migrants have died in the border area since the start of this crisis.
