2021–2022 Belarus–European Union border crisis  

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The 2021 Belarus–European Union border crisis is a migrant crisis manifested in an influx of several tens of thousands of migrants, mainly from Iraq and Africa, to Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland via those countries' borders with Belarus. The crisis was triggered by the severe deterioration in Belarus–European Union relations, following the 2020 Belarusian presidential election, the 2020–2021 Belarusian protests, the Ryanair Flight 4978 incident, and the attempted forced repatriation of Krystsina Tsimanouskaya.

The crisis began in early summer of 2021, when Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko threatened to introduce human traffickers, drug smugglers and armed migrants to Europe. Later, Belarusian authorities and state-controlled tourist enterprises, together with some airlines operating in the Middle East, started promoting tours to Belarus by increasing the number of connections from the Middle East and giving those who bought them visas, ostensibly for hunting purposes. Social media groups were additionally offering fraudulent advice on the rules of crossing the border to the prospective migrants, most of whom were trying to go to Germany. Those who arrived to Belarus were then given instructions about how and where to trespass the European Union (EU) border and what to tell the border guards on the other side, and were often guided by the guards up until the border. However, those who did not manage to cross it were often made to stay on the border. The Belarusian authorities did not accept humanitarian aid sent from Poland and have been accused of assaulting some migrants who failed to get across.

Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia have described the crisis as hybrid warfare by human trafficking of migrants, waged by Belarus against the EU, and called on Brussels to intervene.



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