Poland to build buffer zone on border with Belarus

(Patria) - Poland has decided to build a buffer zone on the border with Belarus.

At yesterday's meeting in Białystok in the east of the country, Prime Minister Donald Tusk's government ordered the Ministry of Interior to begin the process of building a buffer zone.

This is intended to make it more difficult to illegally smuggle migrants across the Polish-Belarusian border and to improve working conditions for border guards, the army, and the police.

The buffer zone will likely be 200 meters wide, but in some places, it will be much wider, up to two kilometers.

Poland, a member of the European Union and NATO, shares a border with Belarus that is about 400 kilometers long.

The measure is a reaction to the recent fatal stabbing of a Polish soldier at the border fence.

The army says the soldier was attacked from the Belarusian side at the end of May. He was seriously injured and eventually succumbed to his wounds.

Polish President Andrzej Duda said yesterday that all efforts would be made to apprehend and punish the attacker.

The PAP news agency reported that Tusk also announced a relaxation of legal regulations regarding the use of firearms by security forces.

Poland and the EU accuse Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko of organizing the transport of migrants from crisis regions to the EU's external borders to put pressure on the West.

During the summer of 2022, Poland secured its border with Belarus with a 5.5-meter-high barbed wire fence and an electronic surveillance system.

Despite the construction of border structures, migrants continue to illegally cross the EU's external border on a daily basis.