Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday (11) asked the European Union (EU) to resume dialogue with the Belarusian government, accused of fueling a migration crisis on its border with Poland, and threatened to suspend gas supplies to Europe if it is subjected to new sanctions.
In the case of punitive measures, Minsk will “respond”, said Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, mentioning the possibility of interrupting gas supplies from the Yamal-Europe pipeline, which transports mainly Russian gas to Germany and Poland.
“What would happen if we cut the natural gas that goes there?” asked Lukashenko, who made the threat at a time when European countries are suffering from the increase in gas prices due to reduced supply.
More than 2,000 migrants, mainly Kurds, are stranded in the open for days on the Belarus-Polish border in deplorable humanitarian conditions, while temperatures in this part of Europe drop to zero degrees.
This crisis between Belarus, Russia’s ally, and Poland, a member of the European Union, was discussed at an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council.
The body’s Western countries condemned in a joint resolution “the orchestrated instrumentalization of human beings” by Belarus with the aim of “distracting attention from its own growing human rights violations.”
