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The Belarusian leader has made his first public appearance near the chaotic border since the crisis erupted.
With the end of the week-long crisis on the eastern border of the European Union, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko has told hopeful asylum seekers that his country will not stop trying to join the bloc.
Addressing a group on Friday, the first public appearance on the border since the crisis began, Lukashenko met with asylum seekers and refugees in a shelter-turned warehouse and told them they were free to go west or go home the way they wanted.
An Iraqi teenager told Lukashenko that he could not return home and hoped to continue in Europe.
“We don’t expect to be alone,” Lukashenko replied. “We will work together on your dream.”
Lukashenko said no one would be forced.
“If you want to go west, we won’t arrest you, drown you, beat you,” he said amid hundreds of applause. “It’s up to you. Cross it. Go.”
He added: “We will not arrest you in any way, we will tie your hands and load you on planes if you do not want to be sent home.”
Thousands of refugees and asylum seekers are stranded between Belarus and Poland, a crisis the EU has said Minsk said was distributing Belarusian visas in the Middle East, flying in and crossing the border.
Lukashenko said it was the EU that caused the humanitarian crisis that had to be deliberately resolved.
On Friday, he told asylum seekers that he would not play politics with their fate.
‘Hybrid War’
Poland and other EU nations have argued that the crisis is part of a “hybrid war” that Minsk discussed as a revenge for EU sanctions imposed after last year’s crackdown on anti-election protests discussed by Lukashenko and designed to destabilize the bloc.
The EU has agreed on new sanctions in response to the border crisis, and Brussels diplomats have said it must be accepted and approved in early December.
Latvia, Lithuania and Poland have deployed thousands of border guards, soldiers and police to seal the border and repel people trying to cross Belarus.
On Friday, Lithuania said it could close its border crossings if it tried to cross the truck from Belarus.
Belarus has begun to take some people home.
On Friday, two planes carried hundreds of Iraqis from Belarus to Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdish autonomous region.
Two more flights were expected on November 26 and 27, the TASS news agency reported.
Warsaw has said the repatriation of refugees and asylum seekers has been a change of tactics rather than a real attempt at de-escalation, and Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who is touring European capitals this week, has raised the possibility of gathering support for a tough response. sanctions if the crisis escalates.
Poland and Lithuania have continued to denounce attempts to cross people who are increasingly desperate in the face of winter conditions. Polish authorities also complained of unrest in one of the detention centers set up for refugees and asylum seekers who entered the country.
The problems have exacerbated relations between Russia, the main sponsor of Belarus, and the conflict between the EU and Moscow, which has had the lowest post-Cold War levels since Moscow took over Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who helped Lukashenko face massive street protests in Lukashenko after last year’s elections, has also helped Minsk in its recent talks with the EU.
Meanwhile, humanitarian fears are growing, with the deaths of at least a dozen refugees and asylum seekers in recent weeks. The actual number of dead is believed to be higher.
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