Poland’s steely response to Russia’s hybrid warfare - Eastern European countries are keeping out Russia’s “weaponized migrants.” Reporters got a look.

Washington post ^ | 19th May 2026 | Jim Geraghty

[Cronos]

In 2020, just 246 people tried to sneak into Poland from Belarus through the marshy wetlands on the border, according to the Polish government’s records. There was a pandemic on, after all. But over the following year, almost 40,000 migrants from Syria, Somalia, Iran, Afghanistan, India and other countries crossed or attempted to cross this frontier.

Those migrants didn’t end up in Belarus by accident. Some were carrying Russian visas or entry stamps. Russia and its ally — some would say lackey — Belarus were, in effect, importing migrants, delivering them to the Polish-Belarusian border and telling them to head west, into the European Union.

The number of migrants attempting to cross the Polish-Belarusian border declined in subsequent years, according to the Polish military officials who briefed us. So far this year, the figure is only in the hundreds.

What stopped the tide? Indisputably a large factor was Poland’s building of more than 120 miles of steel fencing, about 15 feet high, with large coils of barbed wire running along the top and halfway up on the Polish side and an additional layer of coils along the far side of a road running beside this stretch of the 260-mile border.

Poland is not alone. Finland has completed 115 miles of a fence on its southeastern border with Russia, with plans for 124 miles when finished. Estonia has completed 68 miles of a planned fence along its eastern border with Russia, with just a few miles left to be finished. Latvia has built about 174 miles along its border with Russia and 90 miles along its border with Belarus. Lithuania has built 328 miles of fencing on its border with Belarus.

---

TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Foreign Affairs
KEYWORDS:

[Cronos]

This new curtain is designed to keep third-world migrants out — as they have proved to be useful pawns for Vladimir Putin in his aims to destabilize the free countries unlucky enough to be his neighbors.