Wednesday 17th November 2021
Poland: “Not a good step”
Merkel’s phone call with Lukashenko criticized
In view of the plight of thousands of migrants on the border between Belarus and Poland, Chancellor Merkel had a phone call with the Belarusian ruler Lukashenko. The Polish government criticizes this step. Merkel thus to a certain extent accept Lukashenko’s controversial election.
Poland has criticized the attempts to mediate by Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron in the crisis surrounding migrants on the Polish-Belarusian border. The government in Warsaw had been informed in advance of Merkel’s phone call with the Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko and Macron’s conversation with Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin, government spokesman Piotr Müller told the public broadcaster TVP. He personally wondered about the conversation with Lukashenko, because this was “in a way the acceptance of his choice,” said Müller. “I understand the situation, but I think it’s not a good move.”
Merkel had called Lukashenko on Monday evening in view of the plight of the migrants. According to a report on Belarusian State Television, the conversation lasted about 50 minutes. It was Merkel’s first conversation with the ruler since the controversial presidential election on August 9th last year in Belarus.
The EU does not recognize Lukashenko as president. The background to this is massive allegations of fraud in the election and the actions of the Belarusian security forces against peaceful demonstrators and civil society.
Also on Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron had a long phone call with Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin about the role Russia could play in resolving the conflict. Putin spoke to Lukashenko on Tuesday.
In temperatures around freezing point, thousands of migrants have been waiting at the border in makeshift camps for several days. According to the Belarusian state agency Belta, the ruler Alexander Lukashenko ordered the establishment of a night camp in the storage facilities of a logistics company in the Grodno region near the border. The EU accuses Lukashenko of bringing refugees from crisis regions to the EU’s external border in an organized manner in order to put pressure on them. It is suspected that he wants to take revenge for EU sanctions.