Migrants are at the border checkpoint at Bruzgi, Belarus, and Kuznica, Poland, on Wednesday. They are caught in a border crisis between Belarus and its EU neighbors that began to escalate earlier this month.
Oksana Manchuk/TASS via Getty Images
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Oksana Manchuk/TASS via Getty Images
For months, the government of Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko has accelerated the number of visas it grants migrants seeking refuge from war and poverty in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and beyond.
But the visas aren’t being issued with the intention of letting the migrants stay in Belarus. Officials in European Union countries say Lukashenko is doing this as a ploy to send large numbers of migrants to Poland and other EU members that border Belarus in retaliation for the bloc’s economic sanctions.
The EU has hit the Lukashenko regime with several rounds of sanctions since last year, accusing him of stealing his country’s 2020 election as well as ordering violent crackdowns on his opponents and other rights abuses of citizens.
A man holding a child wipes his eye as the Kurdish family from Dohuk in Iraq waits for the border guard patrol, near Narewka, Poland, near the Polish-Belarusian border on Nov. 9. The three-generation family of 16 — with seven minors, including the youngest who is 5 months old — spent about 20 days in the forest and was pushed back to Belarus eight times.
Wojtek Radwanski/AFP via Getty Images
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Wojtek Radwanski/AFP via Getty Images
A man holding a child wipes his eye as the Kurdish family from Dohuk in Iraq waits for the border guard patrol, near Narewka, Poland, near the Polish-Belarusian border on Nov. 9. The three-generation family of 16 — with seven minors, including the youngest who is 5 months old — spent about 20 days in the forest and was pushed back to Belarus eight times.
Wojtek Radwanski/AFP via Getty Images
After securing what are typically seven-day visas and paying agencies from $3,000 to $6,000 for passage they are told will take them to the European…