EU-Belarus crisis, Lukashenko: "Ready to stop the gas"

High tension between Belarus and the European Union, at loggerheads for the thousands of migrants stationed, in precarious and desperate conditions, in the Grodno area, on the border between Belarus and Poland.

The regime of Aleksandr Lukashenko is in fact pressing for Poland - and therefore the EU - to open the border, allowing migrants to pass. But Warsaw is currently blocking transit and, indeed, has placed barbed wire and armed soldiers to guard the border, while Brussels has announced new sanctions against Belarus, accused of using migrants "as ammunition" against the EU.

Bielorussia, centinaia di famiglie accampate davanti al filo spinato. Sognando l'Europa

I migranti sono bloccati nella zona di Grodno, al confine con la Polonia

La situazione è in stallo

I soldati polacchi stanno impedendo loro il passaggio

Il filo spinato e panni stesi

I migranti sono accampati in condizioni disperate

Le temperature nella regione sono quasi sotto zero

Ci si riscalda con i fuochi

L'approvvigionamento di legna

I migranti chiedono asilo all'Ue

Tra loro decine di bambini

I militari polacchi in armi

Migranti ricevono l'acqua

A crisis on which Lukashenko himself has intervened in these hours, even threatening to block the transit of Russian gas to Europe. "We supply heat to the EU and they threaten to close the border. What if we cut off the supply of natural gas there?", The Belarusian president defiantly speculated, referring to the Yamal-Europe pipeline that brings the fuel to Poland and Germany.

The reply from Brussels is ready, which through the Commissioner for the Economy Paolo Gentiloni warned Minsk: “We do not let ourselves be intimidated”.

And precisely at the height of the tensions between the EU and Belarus, the news arrives - launched as an indiscretion by the Bloomberg agency - of the alert issued by the United States to the EU allies, relating to a new, possible invasion of Ukraine by Russia , for many "godmother" of the anti-EU attitude of Minsk.

According to sources cited by Bloomberg, Washington is monitoring the increase in Russian forces near the border with Ukraine and the movements of troops would precisely suspect the will to cross the border, as already happened in 2014.

Moscow also sent two Tupolev Tu-160 bombers to Belarus, officially to perform "a series of training tasks at the Ruzhansky range".

An explosive situation that the UN Security Council is also dealing with, to find solutions that lead to a de-escalation of the crisis, while Russian President Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation with German Chancellor Angela Merkel asking that Brussels "Reopens to dialogue" with the Minsk government.

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(Unioneonline / lf)