EU condemns Belarus for 'direct attack' using migrants

The European Union is condemning Belarus for what it says is an attempt to destabilize the bloc by deliberating sending scores of migrants across its borders

BRUSSELS -- The European Union on Wednesday condemned what it called Belarus’s “aggressive behavior” in organizing illegal border crossings with migrants into Latvia, Lithuania and Poland with the aim of destabilizing the 27-nation bloc. So far this year, more than 4,100 asylum-seekers, most of them from Iraq, have illegally crossed from Belarus into Lithuania. That’s 50 times more than during all of 2020. They're being sheltered in temporary camps across the Baltic EU member. Poland said Wednesday it had deployed nearly 1,000 troops to its border with Belarus to help border guards cope with a surge of migrants — again mostly from Iraq — who were trying to enter the country. “This aggressive behavior … is unacceptable and amounts to a direct attack aimed at destabilizing and pressurizing the EU,” said a statement by Slovenia, which holds the bloc’s rotating presidency until the end of the year, after emergency talks among the bloc's interior ministers.