Thousands of Polish soldiers will help border guards secure the border with Belarus for at least another half year, until Poland builds a massive wall in place of a makeshift razor wire fence in an attempt to close a new migration route from the Middle East through Belarus.
"We expect further attempts to cross the border, until the moment when the permanent wall will be there. It will be in about half a year, as announced by the Minister of the Interior and Administration, because the construction will take that long. We forecast the engagement of the army for at least half a year, of course there will be to be as long as necessary," Deputy Minister of Defense Vojceh Skurkiewicz told the state-run Polish Radio today.
The 5,5-meter-high fence along the border with Belarus should, according to three construction contracts signed with contractors by the Polish authorities at the beginning of January, be completed in June this year, it will cost Polish taxpayers around 370 million euros, and since it was declared urgent and in the public interest, it was resolved is that the construction will not be hindered by other special regulations such as the construction law or the law on environmental protection.
However, the construction can be hindered by the European Union, since the metal wall passes through the most precious natural reserve, the Białowieża Rainforest, which is under the protection of UNESCO and also under the special protection of the European directive from 1992, which protects wild flora and fauna on the territory of the European Union.
At the end of last year, Polish activists already sued the Polish authorities to the European Commission because the special law on the construction of the wall suspended the necessary assessments as to how much and how the building will affect the areas protected in the EU by the NATURA 2000 system, and in the last such large preserved European rainforest, it will certainly make migration impossible lynx, wolf and brown bear.
"No public interest gives the right to avoid such an assessment, as the European Court of Justice has clearly stated several times in its judgments," reads the complaint against the special law on the border wall to the European Commission.
The border guard defends that it is planned that there will be passages in the wall for protected animal species, on 186 km 22 large passages and also small ones for smaller animals, e.g. reptiles, but admits that the passages will be opened only if the current situation on the Polish-Belarusian border allows it, that is, when there are no illegal attempts by refugees to enter Poland through the green border.
According to today's announcement by the Polish Border Guard, the border between Poland and Belarus is much calmer than last fall, and in the last 24 hours, 18 refugees tried to enter illegally, while a group of 35 tried unsuccessfully to break down the razor wire fence last night.
During the last year, the Border Guard recorded almost 40.000 attempts to cross the border illegally, the most in October - 17.500.
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