Poland says Russia and Belarus use migrants as weapon against NATO

POLAND-BELARUS BORDER — Polish soldiers riding in a military convoy along the country’s 521-kilometer border with Belarus pointed to dense forests where they say a new form of warfare is taking place.

Polish officials say Russia and Belarus are using illegal migrants to destabilize NATO’s eastern flank. They warn that some of those migrants are also reaching the United States.

The border was once guarded mainly by Poland’s Border Guard and police. After years of rising crossings, officials say the army had to step in because the situation had grown too large and too dangerous for normal immigration enforcement.

The frontier is now guarded in layers by soldiers, border guards and rapid-response forces. A temporary barrier built in 2021 has been replaced by an electronic fence with surveillance systems and military patrols. Migrants trying to cross have come from Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan and India, officials say.

They call the flows “artificial migration.” Migrants are flown into Belarus from the Middle East, Africa and Asia, then moved toward the Polish border by Belarusian authorities to pressure NATO countries.

Military officials said the peak came in 2021, when there were 39,697 illegal crossing attempts. The number fell to 29,869 in 2025, slightly below the 2024 total. So far in 2026, officials report a sharp drop.

For Warsaw, the numbers tell only part of the story. Officials say the pressure is not spontaneous migration but a Russian-backed Belarusian operation meant to destabilize NATO from within.

“We are at war,” Ambassador Krzysztof Olendzki of Poland’s Foreign Ministry told Fox News Digital after the border visit. “Not only Poland, but also all the countries of the eastern flank of NATO, we are in war. We cannot see it as a classical war with soldiers, with tanks and so on, but the war is exercised by our adversaries, by Belarus and Russia, who are using practically migrants as an asymmetric weapon against NATO countries.”

The crisis began in 2021, when Poland, Lithuania and Latvia accused Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s regime of encouraging migrants from the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere to travel to Belarus and cross illegally into the European Union. Belarus has denied orchestrating the flows, but Poland and the EU have described the campaign as hybrid warfare.

Olendzki said the goal is not only to push people across the border but to create chaos inside Western societies.

Capt. Angelika Korkosz of Poland’s 18th Division described the daily strain on soldiers. “Many times soldiers were faced with aggression from illegal groups of immigrants, and they have to act appropriately and calmly in accordance with the law and procedures while protecting themselves,” she said.

Polish officials said migrants have used Molotov cocktails in at least two incidents, sparking fires near the border. Soldiers also spoke of a Polish serviceman who died after being stabbed by an illegal migrant at the frontier.

Korkosz said the challenge is not only violence but exhaustion. “A few months ago, we had minus-20-degree winters, so 12-hour duty during these conditions is really demanding,” she said. “Many soldiers are here for a long time, and it is getting more and more difficult, this long separation from their relatives.”

Poland says the border defenses are working. Olendzki said the lower number of crossings this year reflects the physical barrier, the increased effectiveness of the Border Guard and the military presence. He warned the threat has not disappeared, only shifted.

“Seeing the fact that the Polish-Belarusian border is quite well guarded, our adversaries are just pushing migrants through the borders of our neighboring countries,” he said. “So it hasn’t ended, but it’s changed the direction. The threat still exists, and we must be vigilant.”

That matters to NATO because Poland’s border with Belarus is also the eastern edge of the European Union and NATO territory. Belarus is Russia’s closest ally and allowed its territory to be used for Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

During a meeting with reporters in Warsaw, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski told Fox News Digital that Russia’s war against Ukraine is, for Poland, “a matter of national safety and existence.” He said the threat to NATO countries is already wider than the battlefield in Ukraine.

“We had on NATO countries’ territories assassinations, numerous drone attacks on airports, on critical infrastructure,” Sikorski said. “We had very serious cyberattacks.”

Sikorski said Poland faced a Russian-instigated cyberattack last December on critical energy infrastructure that Warsaw believes was intended “to black out part of Poland.”

For Poland, illegal migration, cyberattacks, drones, sabotage and disinformation are not separate problems. They are different pieces of one Russian and Belarusian pressure campaign against NATO.

Olendzki said Poland’s role is to stop the pressure before it moves deeper into Europe or beyond. “Standing on guard on the eastern flank of NATO, we are providing security not only to Poland, to Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, but to entire NATO, also to the United States,” he said.

Poland now spends nearly 5% of its GDP on defense, the highest rate in NATO. Sikorski said Warsaw has long taken defense spending seriously. “We never went below 2% defense spending,” he said. “Now we are spending almost 5%. This is real military spending.”

He said the eastern flank has become more influential inside NATO because countries closest to Russia were proven right. “The eastern flank is much more powerful than even five years ago,” Sikorski said. “We were right about the nature of Putin’s regime and Russia’s aggressive strategy.”

Sikorski said Poland understands that “Europe ceased to be angle number one for U.S. foreign policy,” but wants any change in America’s role to be “gradual and well-designed.” He added that Poland wants the shift in trans-Atlantic security to be “not a divorce, but a new kind of relationship.”