European officials have also accused Belarus of encouraging people to cross illegally into Poland, and its other EU neighbours, as part of efforts to put pressure on the bloc over sweeping sanctions it imposed on Minsk.
The sanctions by the EU, the US and Britain in June were a coordinated response to the Lukashenko government's forced landing of a Ryanair flight and arrest of an opposition journalist as well as "continuing repression" in the former Soviet state.
Lithuanian officials say migrants are being flown from the Middle East to Minsk, and then guided to the Belarus-Lithuania border by unspecified facilitators, where they are allowed to cross unimpeded by Belarusian border police. Lithuania has called it "petty" and "mass revenge" for the EU sanctions.
A Western intelligence official told CNN in August that the scheme could not function without the permission of the Belarusian state, and that Lukashenko was likely using the migrants as a way to pressure the EU into negotiations to lift the sanctions against him.
Lukashenko himself publicly threatened to flood the EU with "migrants and drugs" in May.
The UN Migration Agency said in a statement earlier this month that it was deeply concerned by the "dire conditions" faced by migrants at the EU-Belarus border, where a group of around 30 migrants had been stuck for several weeks with limited access to drinking water and food, medical assistance, sanitation and shelter.
In a press conference earlier this month, Kaminski described the group of migrants stuck at the border as "the tip of the iceberg," adding "our security is at risk, and we act in proportion to the scale and degree of the threat."
"Lukashenko wants to threaten us. We will not allow Poland to be another route of mass transfer of illegal immigrants to the EU. We will not allow the security of our citizens to be compromised. These activities are aimed at ensuring security on the Polish border, its integrity and the safety of citizens who live at the border," Kaminski said.
SOURCE: Kake
