Poland is implementing additional security measures at its border with Belarus to fend off hybrid threats, the Polish government said on Friday.
An additional mesh fence will be erected at the border in Podlaskie province, which will run alongside the road and the metal barrier at the border.
The new fence will help the Border Guard detain migrants who manage to cross the first barrier.
The structure will be four metres high and will be accompanied by barbed wire running across and along the fence. Materials for its construction are already being delivered to the border.
The fence will also be equipped with thermal-imaging cameras, which are placed on 10-metre-long poles, Brigadier General Sławomir Klekotka, Commander of the Podlaskie Border Guard Unit, confirmed.
The decision to bolster security measures comes as Poland announced it will reopen two border crossings with Belarus that it had closed in September in response to large-scale military exercises conducted by Belarusian and Russian forces.
“We have sealed [the border] in such a way that the risk of illegal crossings has been reduced to an absolute minimum,” Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said at a press conference on Friday.
“And this is why I decided, in consultation with local authorities and entrepreneurs from Podlaskie, to open these border crossings,” Tusk noted, adding that the re-opening of the borders will be closely monitored.
Earlier in October, Tusk said Poland would delay the re-opening of the two border crossings until at least mid November in solidarity with Lithuania amid a heightened security threat from Russia.
The decision to re-open the border was aimed to lift restrictions on the flow of traffic.
“I hope that everyone on both sides of the border understands that these crossings can serve ordinary people and that politics should not brutally interfere in the lives of people living near the border every time,” Tusk said.
The first border crossing to re-open will be the Bobrowniki–Bierestowica border crossing. It will operate with restrictions for freight traffic, limited to vehicles registered in EU member states, EFTA countries that are part of the European Economic Area, and the Swiss Confederation.
Certain restrictions will also apply for passenger traffic, including coaches.
The second crossing, Kuźnica Białostocka–Bruzgi, will reopen with restrictions for passenger traffic only, with bus traffic excluded.
Poland has long accused Belarus of luring asylum seekers and then pushing them en masse towards the border in an effort to destabilise the country.