For many years authoritarian regime of Lukashenko was providing EU with border security. The deal was simple – dictator prevents refugees going through Belarus to EU and for that get’s money and trainings for the border guards. Despite sanctions from 2011 to 2015 Frontex was actively supporting belarusian border regime.
Situation have changed recently when EU stopped sending money to Minsk. Lukashenko gave up protecting borders and made it quite easy to enter country from Iraq, Afganistan and many other conflict zones. This created a small migration channel that EU is not happy about. Conservative governments of Poland, Lithuania and Latvia already introduced laws that would legalize pushbacks. Poland is planning to go even further and criminalize asylum seekers that crossed the border illegally.
In this episode we are talking about history of cooperation between EU and Belarus outside of concerns of violations of human rights and look in details on the current so called crisis at the border.
No one is illegal.
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