Poland Planning to Allocate $375Mln to Strengthen Fence on Border With Belarus

WARSAW (Sputnik) - Poland plans to allocate about $375 million to strengthen the fence on the border with Belarus, Polish Deputy Defense Minister Cezary Tomczyk said.

He added that the border fence is currently not effective enough to deter undocumented migrants. At the same time, he admitted that Polish border guards are pushing migrants caught directly at the border back into Belarus.

"There will be an upgrade, which was developed by the Silesian University of Technology and our engineers, so that it [the fence] becomes impassable. The modernization of the barrier itself will most likely cost about 1.5 billion zlotys," Tomczyk told reporters on Sunday.

Earlier Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that Warsaw hopes to attract EU money to fund these developments, dubbing it an investment into European security.

In mid-2021, tens of thousands of migrants crowded the border between Belarus and Poland, as well as neighboring Latvia and Lithuania in an attempt to enter the European Union. Polish authorities tightened border controls, deployed troops, and accused Belarus of orchestrating a migrant crisis. Minsk rejected the accusation, saying Warsaw was abusing the migrant crisis narrative to aggressively push migrants into Belarusian territory.