(FreedomBeacon.com)- As the crisis along the border between Poland and Belarus intensified, German Chancellor Angela Merkel resorted to begging Russian President Vladimir Putin to use his influence to bring the Belarusian government of President Alexander Lukashenko in line.
According to spokesman Steffan Seibert, in a phone call last Wednesday, Chancellor Merkel told Putin that Belarus weaponizing the migrants against the EU is “inhumane and completely unacceptable.” Merkel asked Putin to “influence” the Lukashenko regime.
But her pleas fell on deaf ears.
On the same day that Merkel was asking Putin to intervene, Russia was engaging in a joint military exercise with Belarus not far from the Polish/Belarusian border.
Both on Wednesday and Thursday, Russia deployed two nuclear-capable bombers on training missions over Belarus. As part of the exercise, Belarusian fighter jets simulated intercept operations against the bombers.
Russia’s deputy UN ambassador, Dmitry Polyansky told reporters in New York that these exercises were in response to the massive build-up of Polish forces on its border with Belarus. Polyansky told reporters that any military build-up by Poland would prompt a reaction from Russia.
So Vladimir Putin is using his influence with the Lukashenko regime, only not in the way Angela Merkel was hoping.
By Monday, a massive sea of migrants, mostly from Iraq and Syria were amassing on the Belarusian side of the border.
Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s Foreign Minister has suggested that the European Union do what they did with Turkey back in 2016 and simply pay the Lukashenko regime to stop the thousands of migrants from attempting to enter the EU.
Both Poland and the EU argue that the migrant rush amounts to “hybrid warfare” by Belarus and Russia in response to EU sanctions on the Lukashenko regime. They claim that Belarus is exploiting the migrants as a sub-military means of destabilizing Europe.
Ironically, it was none other than Angela Merkel herself who, in 2015, declared the EU’s borders open to migrants. This resulted in an unprecedented flood of “refugees” from Syria and Iraq which drove a wedge between Western European pro-mass migration countries and the EU’s central European members, like Poland, who opposed the move.
