Eurasia Press & News
Even as the risk of provocation rises, locals on Poland’s border with Belarus are trying to remain calm. What worries them more than the proximity of Wagner mercenaries is an overreaction by a state that’s had its vulnerability to hybrid threats exposed.
Two years into the migration crisis and tensions on the Polish-Belarusian border continue to escalate. The Polish Border Guard said on Monday that so far this year 19,000 migrants, mainly from the Middle East or Africa, had tried to cross the Polish-Belarusian border illegally, up from 16,000 last year, with violence increasing as the guards are attacked with rocks, firecrackers, bottles and branches.
Since late June, there have also been growing concerns over the presence of Wagner Group mercenaries, which Belarusian dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko agreed to take in as part of the deal to end the June 23 mutiny in Russia.
The fears were made real when on the morning of August 1 two Belarusian military helicopters flew across the border and circled the town of Bialowieza. Some residents posted photos online which quickly circulated on social media, sparking heated debate. Despite the mounting evidence of an incursion, the Polish Defence Ministry spent 10 hours denying that Belarusian helicopters had entered Polish airspace before finally admitting the incident had indeed taken place.
Then on Monday, Belarus announced it was beginning military exercises involving tanks and drones close to the Suwalki Gap, a hard-to-defend narrow strip of land connecting Poland to the Baltic states that is wedged between the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and Belarus.
In response, the Polish government and its allies in the media have adopted similar strategies: alternately echoing and amplifying the threat, while demonstrating the power and professionalism of the Polish uniformed services. Reports of alleged mercenary weaponry and images of migrants attacking servicemen are set against footage of the Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, increasingly often dressed in khaki, posing with troops in front of the 5.5-metre border fence. The governing nationalist-populist Law and Justice (PiS) party has long tried to capitalise on fears related to migrants and the border crisis.
True to form, the government on Monday announced the redeployment of thousands of additional troops to reinforce the border; Tomasz Praga, head of the Polish Border Guard, had issued a request to the Defence Ministry for an extra 1,000 troops to be posted there to reinforce the current 2,000 soldiers already supporting the border guards.
Another showdown at the border with the army in the role of protector of the nation may be just what the party needs before the October 15 parliamentary election, according to critics in the independent media as well as among those who live, work and are currently holidaying near the border.
No panic on the eastern border
Based on media reports, it might be expected that there would be panic among the populace and heightened military activity in the border areas in the immediate aftermath of the violation of Polish airspace by the helicopters.
However, when BIRN visited the border region of Podlasie on August 1-4 it seemed remarkably calm – certainly less militarised than in the winter of 2021-22 when the migrant crisis, a cynical attempt by the Lukashenko regime to weaponise migrants, was at its peak.
Outside the local grocery on August 1, two twentysomethings gossiped about the helicopters, but when asked about their thoughts on the situation, they shrugged and replied: “We won’t be interrupting our vacation because of that.”
The following day at noon, when hundreds of soldiers were supposed to be descending on Bialowieza, the border roads were clogged mostly with cyclists. Reaching the end of the road near the border, BIRN encountered one vehicle – a horse-drawn carriage with tourists.
At around 4:00pm on August 2, more than 30 hours after the helicopters were reported over Bialowieza, military trucks began arriving. Yet locals didn’t seem too thrilled to see them again.
For two, rather irritating years, they shared the town with these newcomers, forced to listen to the churning of their electricity generator set up in the middle of the town’s historic park. The military was there in a show of strength that Poland could secure the border against the migrants being herded over by the Belarusians. Soldiers supported the border guards in performing pushbacks at the border.
Locals, however, also reported being constantly stopped to show their documents, witnessed armoured vehicles being driven through the pristine primeval forest and, for many the worst of all, saw the tourists scared off. When the troops began to redeploy from the area last month, the town’s hospitality industry had hoped tourists would start returning, but, according to Slawomir Dron, a local restaurateur, no more than 30 per cent have done so.
“By May, June it looked good – no frenzy, like people slowly started to forget what was happening here,” said Dron. “And then the news on the Wagner mercenaries broke, all the media buzz followed and people started to cancel.”
For those who came, the contrast between the media coverage and the bucolic mood must have been striking. A day after the helicopters’ incursion, families were strolling along the trails in the wilderness, and each morning sizeable groups gathered at the forest guides’ office, waiting to visit the nature reserve. When BIRN checked into a guesthouse just 1.5 kilometres from the border, the hosts had warned of only one thing – leave the front door wide open all night for the cats to come and go.
“What’s the purpose of this constant scaremongering?” asked Dron. “The prime minister should come with his family for a week’s holiday and show that it’s safe. Instead, he just drops by to get footage with the fence and the troops. Maybe from Warsaw’s perspective this is great politics, but we have our lives and decades of running businesses here.”
Some locals, however, suspect a different purpose. The ruling party has been underperforming in the opinion polls in the run-up to the October 15 election, leading some to believe that if the border situation worsens, the government could order a state of emergency. The rules governing the imposition of the state of emergency, as laid out in the Polish constitution, prohibit any elections during it and for 90 days afterwards.
On June 30 at a conference in Brussels, Prime Minister Morawiecki said that while “a decision on whether to impose a state of emergency in a certain area of the country due to the presence of the Wagner Group in Belarus would be premature at the moment, a decision will be taken when there is a full picture of the situation.”
Warriors in sweaters
Locals argue that to prevent another embarrassment like the incursion of the helicopters, the government should focus on several issues: raise the quality of the uniformed personnel, and increase coordination and communication with the local community.
They cite numerous examples of incidents that have occurred since the army was deployed there to manage the migrant crisis. Residents have reported that soldiers pointed their guns at them, acted nervously and sometimes aggressively, and in January 2022 a soldier shot himself in the park in the middle of the town.
Foreign visitors and students of the local scientific centres complain they have been subjected to particularly heavy scrutiny. Two non-white doctoral students of Bialowieza’s research institute were arrested at the point of a gun, while there were also several cases of men in plainclothes stopping and searching scientists who were working in the forest, while refusing to identify themselves properly.
“It’s hard to say whether it’s an attack or actual soldiers,” complained one local who requested anonymity. “I understand carding people with darker complexions, but I would expect some procedures that they introduce themselves. Once in the local store a man in a casual pullover approached my non-white friend and demanded he ‘hand over documents!’ Well, it smelled like a robbery to me. They are armed, keep their fingers on the trigger and are very nervous. To date, we don’t know who it was, whether an official in civilian clothes, a guard or some other part of the military. Very unprofessional.”
“We’d like the border service personnel to be professional, well trained,” said the restaurateur Dron. “Soldiers deployed here come from various parts of Poland, they change every three weeks, and for many it’s the first time to experience such a wilderness with huge fallen oak trees. They simply have no idea how to navigate such terrain.”
To whom do we report?
Regional forests are a space where various groups come into contact. Despite the presence of the uniformed services, migrants cross the border every day. Volunteers who deliver humanitarian aid have repeatedly reported encountering not only migrants but also smugglers in the forests.
In addition to the ‘taxi drivers’ who pick up the migrants that make it onto the Polish side of the border, volunteers also run into the guides who lead the groups through the woods. They claim the uniformed services don’t distinguish between these guides and the migrants – if caught, all are pushed back over to the Belarusian side. Instead of detaining the smugglers, who usually cooperate with the Belarusian authorities, they are merely sent back to pick up the next group of migrants.
Volunteers admit to not notifying the border services of the smugglers’ presence, fearing retribution. One activist working with the Border Group NGO explained to BIRN that in the past he would alert the border guards to the presence of criminals, expecting them to be detained and the migrants taken into care. But he said there’s no guarantee the entire group won’t be expelled back into Belarus, where women could face even more violence and direct threats to their lives.
“There are several professional groups that work in the primeval forest every day, including us… We go there at night, for instance to study bats,” professor Michal Zmihorski, head of the Mammal Research Institute in Bialowieza, told BIRN. “Various situations may arise, but we lack guidelines on how to react. No information has been passed on, either from the uniformed services or from the municipality. I’d like to have a simple flyer saying: ‘If you see something worrying, here’s the contact number, here you can send a photo’. I would feel safer. Currently, if I wanted to report something, I would have to browse the internet in search of a solution.”
To find out if there is any reporting system in place, or whether any guidelines have been issued by the central government, BIRN contacted several district and municipal authorities.
In the district office to which Bialowieza belongs, two days after the helicopter incident, there was nobody to provide any information. The crisis management specialist was on vacation all week and no one was there to deputise.
Marek Nazarko, mayor of Michalowo, 50 kilometres north of Bialowieza, admitted that no guidelines had been issued by the government. He was informed, however, that soldiers would be visiting the town in a few days to engage with the residents.
BIRN also spoke to the authorities of two towns located in northeast Poland, in the strategic Suwalki corridor, which is wedged between the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and Belarus.
One official of the ruling PiS party, who declined to be named, repeated the official line that provocations can happen, but the border is well protected and tourists and residents can feel safe. The mayor of the other town, who also declined to be identified, told BIRN that an alert system for civilians is currently being implemented. Initially, he wanted to reveal details, but on learning that other municipalities have no similar systems in place, he clammed up, worrying that his town might become recognisable and a target for attack.
A spokeswoman for the Podlaskie Voivodeship, the regional authority, informed BIRN that drills involving civilian evacuations were held in May. The exercise was also aimed at “determining the level of cooperation between the regions” as well as to “improve cooperation and prepare the public administration for the execution of civil protection tasks.”
Building better communication
The information muddle after the helicopter incursion showed the urgent need to build a communication system that allows for information flows between the various institutions and the public.
Residents who spotted, photographed and reported the helicopters on August 1 faced 10 hours of denial by the Defence Ministry as well as accusations, possibly from Russian and Belarusian regime trolls, that they were engaging in propaganda or suffering from mass hallucinations.
“This does not build civic unity among the community,” warned Artur, a Bialowieza citizen who was involved in verifying the photos’ authenticity. “And I guess the borderland community is very important when it comes to crisis management. If people are ridiculed and accused, they won’t pass on information to the authorities.”
“The uniformed services were well aware of the incursion from the beginning,” argued Daniel Bockowski, an academic specialising in public security. “The state has completely failed at communication, both from the bottom-up and towards the public. That is because the information is delivered by politicians and not by dedicated spokespersons.”
Artur added: “Without any procedures, we are prone to provocation. If today someone faked tanks entering, I bet half the town would start packing.”
Yet, so far, the locals don’t seem to be going anywhere. While the government keeps echoing statements about the danger of Wagner mercenaries, residents express disbelief that as a NATO member the community should be fearing a few hundred paid killers.
Miroslaw Miniszewski, a writer living just near the border, posted on Facebook: “If one observes the actions of this government from the very beginning, all real threats have been either kept mute, downplayed or simply covered up with other manufactured pseudo-threats. I myself have learned, like Pavlov’s dog, that if the government warns against something, I can certainly sleep soundly.”
But the mayor of the town that is already implementing a civilian alert system believes that Russia, with the help of its ally Belarus, will continue escalating, in order to exit the war in Ukraine with the best possible deal.
“Everyone is looking for the magic switch so this nightmare will end,” the mayor said. “But as mayor of a border town, I have a different outlook. We need to mobilise state structures, create civil defence, and address any social problems in key border regions. This war will be won with society’s resilience, not military advantage.”
Although the mayor is far from being a PiS party member, he cautioned against publicly criticising the state, especially pointing out its mistakes in managing the crisis.
“Expressing views is the privilege of Westerners,” he said. “We shouldn’t undermine the power of the state now – whether we like what they are doing or not, our safety depends on them.”
