Against the background of the tense refugee situation on the border between Belarus and Poland, Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) has asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to intervene.
In a telephone conversation with Putin, the Chancellor underlined “that the instrumentalization of migrants against the European Union by the Belarusian regime is inhuman and completely unacceptable,” said government spokesman Steffen Seibert on Wednesday. She asked Putin “to influence the regime in Minsk”.
In the border area between Belarus and Poland, thousands of migrants are currently stuck in freezing temperatures. Both countries have soldiers stationed in the area. Observers fear that the situation will escalate. The EU accuses Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko of deliberately smuggling migrants from the Middle East into the EU states of Latvia, Lithuania and Poland in order to retaliate against the sanctions adopted by Brussels. Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki accused Russia of being behind the refugee dispute between Belarus and the EU.
More in a moment at BILD.