Polish Minister: The Belarusian border crisis may continue for months in Poland

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Poland’s defense minister warned that the crisis on the Belarusian border could last for months, saying that migrants were again “attacking the Polish border” overnight.

On Tuesday, Polish forces fired tear gas and deployed water cannons against people trying to cross the border in an escalation of the months-long standoff on the eastern border of the European Union.

Thousands of people, mostly from the Middle East, are camped at the border in what the West says is a crisis engineered by Belarus to divide the European Union and respond to sanctions, accusations that Minsk has denied.

We must prepare for the fact that the situation on the Polish-Belarusian border will not be resolved quickly. We have to prepare for months. “I hope it won’t happen for years,” Poland’s Defense Minister Mariusz Pasacak told Poland’s Radio Jedinka on Wednesday.

Attempts to cross the border continued through the night, Paszaczak said, adding that people used the same “method of attacking the Polish border” on Tuesday.

“Public attention focused on what happened in Konica, while smaller groups of migrants tried to break through the Polish border in other sections, also at night,” he said.

The border guards said they had detected “161 illegal crossing attempts” on Tuesday, including “two strong attempts to cross the border that were recorded in the evening.”

Polish police said, on Wednesday, that nine officers were injured in the clashes that took place on Tuesday, along with a border guard and a soldier.

A police spokesman said there were no injured officers left at the hospital.

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