The Belarussian leader is making his first public appearance near the border post since the crisis began.
With no end to the crisis for weeks in the eastern European Union, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko told asylum seekers that his country could not prevent them from trying to enter the bloc.
Speaking to the group on Friday, the first public appearance at the border since the crisis began, Lukashenko met refugees and internally displaced persons in a residential area and told them they were free to head west or go home as they wished.
An Iraqi boy has told Lukashenko he cannot return home and hopes to continue on in Europe.
“We can’t wait,” Lukashenko replied. “We will work together on your dream.”
Lukashenko said no one could be pressured.
“If you go west, we will not block you, choke you, beat you,” said hundreds of applause. “It’s up to you. Go through. Go.”
He added, “We will not detain you, handcuff you and raise your plane to take you home if you do not want to.”
Thousands of refugees and asylum seekers have been detained between Belarus and Poland, in what the EU calls Minsk’s crisis over the distribution of Belarus visas in the Middle East, flying and pushing the border.
Lukasjenko said it was the EU that deliberately created the humanitarian crisis that needed to be addressed.
On Friday, he told those seeking security not to play politics with their future.
‘Hybrid War’
Poland and other EU countries say the crisis is part of a “mixed war” Minsk is retaliating against EU sanctions imposed in response to Lukashenko’s violation of anti-election protests last year and was designed to disrupt the bloc.
The EU has approved new sanctions in response to a border dispute, which ambassadors to Brussels said it should be approved by early December.
Latvia, Lithuania and Poland have sent thousands of border guards, soldiers and police to mark the border and push back on those who want to cross from Belarus.
On Friday, Lithuania said it would close its borders if it tried to cross from Belarus by car.
Belarus has begun flying home.
On Friday, two planes flew hundreds of Iraqi people from Belarus to Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish autonomous region of Iraq.
Two more flights are expected on November 26 and 27, the TASS news agency said.
Warsaw said the repatriation of refugees and asylum seekers signaled a change of pace rather than a real attempt to bring down and Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who visited major European cities this week to help respond with the crisis, has increased the chances of continuing. penalties if the problem escalates.
Poland and Lithuania continue to report cross-border trials with people suffering the most from the onset of winter. Polish officials also reported a riot at one of the refugee camps and asylum seekers who had entered the country.
The issue has escalated tensions between Russia, Belarus’s main ally, and the EU, whose relations have been strained since the Cold War since Moscow invaded Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who assisted Lukashenko in carrying out mass protests in the streets after last year’s election, also assisted Minsk in its recent EU conflict.
Meanwhile, humanitarian fears are mounting, with at least 12 refugees and asylum seekers killed in recent weeks. The actual number of casualties is known to be very high.
