Who was behind the Belarus border crisis?

Who was responsible for the migrant crisis on the border between Belarus and the European Union? By 11 November 2021, that question had become central to the dispute between Warsaw and Moscow, after two reported developments two days earlier, on 9 November.

On 9 November, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for orchestrating the crisis on the Belarus–Poland border. He said the crisis had its mastermind in Moscow. The accusation placed the border standoff within Poland–Russia relations, not only within the confrontation with Minsk.

The same day, Lithuania announced a state of emergency, the first since its independence. The announcement came as neighbouring Poland was reported to be facing attacks on its border.

Taken together, the two reports show how the crisis, part of the wider 2021 Belarus–European Union border crisis, had spread beyond a single frontier. Poland was publicly pointing to Moscow, and Lithuania was taking an exceptional step in its own legal order.

For readers in Kyiv and across the region, the events of those days showed a border dispute turning into a matter of high-level political accusation and emergency measures.