Poland’s Border Guard has reported a sharp rise in pressure along its frontier with Belarus, with frequent assaults on officers and increasingly bizarre methods used to breach defences – including one incident in which migrants attempted to ram fencing with a portable toilet.

The standoff on the eastern border has persisted since 2021, when Warsaw accused Minsk of deliberately engineering a migration crisis as part of a “hybrid war” aimed at undermining Poland and the European Union.

According to the Border Guard, both the number and the violence of attempted illegal crossings have escalated. Officers have faced projectiles ranging from stones to Molotov cocktails. In July, Polish troops used rubber bullets against a group trying to force their way through, leaving one Sudanese man in hospital.

“Migration pressure remains high on the Polish–Belarusian border,” the force’s headquarters said in a statement on Thursday. 

“Our officers take action every day to prevent attempts to enter Poland unlawfully.”

Officials added that migrants, angered by the effectiveness of Polish border security, were increasingly resorting to direct attacks and coordinated pushes to overwhelm defences. Footage published on the Border Guard’s website shows a group trying to smash through a barbed-wire fence with a mobile lavatory.

In a separate incident, thirteen Afghan nationals were intercepted while attempting to cross the Bug River – part of the frontier – in an inflatable dinghy. They were spotted by newly deployed surveillance systems forming part of an “electronic barrier” along the border.

Source: TVP World

Photo: X @nexta_polska

Tomasz Modrzejewski