How do you defend yourself against blackmail?
Well, you can go to the police, file a complaint, and hope that the blackmailer is caught and that solves the problem.
In the case of Belarus, things are more complicated.
Because the blackmailer, in this case the dictator Alexander Lukashenko, does not act in secret, but in public.
There are no police officers who could stop him.
And there seems to be little else at the moment to prevent him from continuing to blackmail Europe.
Lukashenko has set up a perfidious system to put the EU under pressure: his regime has organized the transport of people who want to flee from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan to Minsk with high efficiency, including accommodation and short-term visas. Then he has the refugees pushed towards Poland, to the EU's external border, where they meet Polish border guards. The goal: If the EU does not withdraw its sanctions, Belarus will ensure that the refugee transport continues - and that the intra-European conflict and tensions with Poland intensify.
“The sanctions are making Belarus more and more dependent on Russia. Although Putin still stands by him, Lukashenko is not exactly right, «explains SPIEGEL correspondent Christina Hebel in this episode of the international podcast. "Lukashenko absolutely wants to get back into a position in which a dialogue with the EU is possible - and he tries to blackmail that."
Steffen Lüdke, SPIEGEL's migration reporter, goes even further and holds the Europeans accountable: "Such blackmail is, so to speak, the new normal in EU migration policy," he says.
"There will soon be hardly any neighboring states that have not yet blackmailed us."
In this episode of "Eight Billion", Christina and Steffen tell what local measures are urgently needed to help the refugees, whether the EU should close the borders or accept the people and why it is also important to verbally disarm .
You can hear the current episode here:
