According to several Polish news outlets, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki is to fly to Great Britain this week to meet the head of the British government. The political sanctions that the UK intends to impose on Belarus are to be discussed during this meeting.

“UK sanctions should be correlated with the sanctions of the European Union. London is aware of the dangers and consequences of these threats that arise in Moscow and are copied in Minsk,” Morawiecki stated in an interview recently given to Polish news outlet Wprost. 

His visit to Great Britain is part of what many media describe as a diplomatic offensive he is currently leading across Europe. In recent days, the Polish Prime Minister held a series of meetings with among others the prime ministers of the Baltic States (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) as well as Poland’s Visegrad Group partners (the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary) and Croatia with whom he discussed the situation on the Polish-Belarusian border as well as potential new geopolitical threats related to this crisis. 

In a recent press conference, the spokeswoman of the Polish Border Guard Anna Michalska emphasized the country has been confronted with an exponential increase in illegal border crossings for the last months. She pointed out that over 2,500 people have tried to cross the border illegally since the beginning of the year in comparison to less than à hundred last year. 

Last Monday, Polish security services recorded 174 attempts to illegally move from Belarus to Polish territory. With regard to 66 of these migrants, Border Guard officers issued decisions to leave the territory of the Republic of Poland.

Author: Sébastien Meuwissen

Photo: Twitter @MorawieckiM, @BorisJohnson