Polish Prime Minister Matteo Morawiecki has criticized outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel for holding talks with Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko amid the European Union’s immigration crisis.
The EU and the US have blamed Belarus for a sharp rise in migration flows across Europe’s external borders, especially those of Poland, which it said were artificially created by Minsk in retaliation for European sanctions against the government of President Alexander Lukashenko.
The Belarusian leader has said that – reacting to sanctions to suppress the opposition after the 2020 presidential election, in which his opponents denounced widespread fraud – he will no longer stop anyone passing through the territory of Belarus in the direction of Europe.
Warsaw has taken draconian security measures at its borders. The situation has escalated into crises in recent months, as human rights and advocacy groups have expressed growing concerns about the safety of migrants in the middle of winter.
Mrs Merkel spoke with Mr Lukashenko twice, trying to de-escalate the crisis.
Speaking to the German news agency, Mr Morawiecki praised the EU for trying to find a diplomatic solution, but criticized the outgoing German chancellor.
“When he called, he helped to legitimize his regime, while fighting for the freedom of Belarus for 15 months,” he said.
“Lukashenko abused his conversation with Angela Merkel. He claimed that Merkel had agreed to transport 2,000 migrants to Germany and other European countries via a humanitarian corridor. “This is not right.”
Angela Merkel received verbal group fire, inside and outside Germany, for her two conversations with Alexander Lukashenko. However, its spokesman Stephen Seibert stressed that he took the initiative due to the desperate situation of thousands of migrants at the border and in coordination with the European Commission.
Mr Seibert added that any allegation by the President of Belarus that Germany had agreed to accept migrants was false.
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