WARSAW (Reuters) – Poland may reopen one border crossing with Belarus, the prime minister said on Friday, in a bid to help businesses in the country’s east who have taken a hit from the closure of checkpoints due to tense relations between Warsaw and Minsk.
Poland’s border with Belarus has been a flashpoint since migrants started flocking there in 2021, after Minsk, a close Russian ally, opened travel agencies in the Middle East offering a new unofficial route into Europe – a move the European Union said was designed to create a crisis.
Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, relations have become even more strained, and Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Saturday that Poland would spend around 10 billion zlotys($2.55 billion) on securing the frontier.
“We need to analyse whether it is possible to unblock one crossing,” Tusk told an election rally in the eastern city of Bialystok on Friday.
“I will not make this decision if the military and border guard commands have a clearly negative opinion that it may have a negative, massive impact on our security.”
He said the crossing he would consider opening would be Bobrowniki. At present, four of the six crossings with Belarus are completely closed.
The Border Guard has reported larger numbers of migrants trying to cross the border illegally in recent weeks.
($1 = 3.9185 zlotys)
(Reporting by Alan Charlish and Karol Badohal in Warsaw; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
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