Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said today that Warsaw has about 6,000 Polish guards on the border with Belarus in the ongoing migration crisis.
“Almost 6,000 soldiers from the 16th, 18th and 120th divisions are already stationed on the Polish-Belarusian border,” Blaszczak wrote on Twitter, adding that they would help border guards prevent any unauthorized crossings.
In the last 24 hours, Polish border guards reported 612 attempts to cross the border with Belarus. About 10,000 attempts to cross the border illegally were detected this month after 20,000 cases in September, BGNES reports.
In recent months, Poland, along with neighboring Latvia and Lithuania, has reported an influx of migrants trying to move to the European Union from Belarus, accusing Minsk of facilitating illegal migration in order to destabilize the bloc in response to large-scale sanctions.
Minsk has denied the allegations, saying it cannot curb the flow of migrants due to Western sanctions.