Hundreds of migrants or refugees are also waiting in Belarus in the new year at the border with Poland, hoping to reach the European Union. Six hundred people are staying in emergency housing in the warehouse of a logistics center in the village of Brusgi, the Belarusian Red Cross in Minsk said, at the request of the German news agency dpa. Many refugees at the border want to go to Germany.
Counter-sanctions went into effect in Belarus today, in response to sanctions from the EU, the US and other countries. From 1 January, the import of many goods from the West is prohibited. The embargo also applies to meat and dairy products. The regime in Minsk speaks of a reaction to the “discriminatory politics and the unfriendly acts towards our country”.
Earlier, the EU took sanctions against Belarusians suspected of involvement in the transport of migrants to the EU border. The US, Canada and the UK also took punitive measures.
The EU accuses Belarus of deliberately bringing people from crisis regions to the country, only to take them to the borders with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. People have been waiting there for months, hoping to continue their journey to Europe.
The West has criticized authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko for using migrants to destabilize the EU. Poland alone registered about 40,000 attempts to illegally cross the border into Belarus in the past year.
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