US Air Force Conducting Electronic Reconnaissance Over Whole Territory of Belarus

Over the past weeks, thousands of migrants have been trying to cross the Belarusian border and enter the European Union. Brussels has accused Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko of deliberately opening the border for migrants from crisis regions to enter the EU so as to destabilize the situation.

US Air Force planes are conducting optoelectronic reconnaissance of Belarus’ western areas and radioelectronic monitoring of the whole country, said Deputy head of the Belarusian Security Council Major General Vladimir Archakov early on Saturday.

“The intensity of flights, performed by US intelligence and strategic aviation, has increased in Poland’s airspace, near Belarussian state border, which allows conducting optical-electronic reconnaissance of our western regions, and electronic reconnaissance of all country's territory. Military component has been added to the activities of our border service,” he said in an interview with Natsionalnaya Oborona magazine.

He cited data showing a contingent of 4,000 American troops near the Polish-Belarusian border. The new agreement on expanded cooperation between the US and Poland in the field of defense, signed on August last year, enables the US to increase its troops by 1,000 people and improve the existing military infrastructure for the deployment of about 20,000 military personnel. This figure, according to Archakov, is comparable to "army of an entire country."

The general added that the current re-equipment of the Polish Armed Forces is focused on the American military-industrial complex and includes appropriations in 2021-2035 worth about $133 billion.

"It is obvious that the Polish and US’ interests in the East European region coincided. The US views the presence of its troops on Polish territory as a ‘tool to deter Moscow’," Archakov said.

A Way to Regional Conflicts

The Russian Ambassador to US Anatoly Antonov told the Newsweek magazine on Friday that the migration crisis on the Belarusian-Polish has been triggered not by the policy of Minsk, but by the Western attempts to "impose the vision of democracy across the world."

The ambassador stressed that those efforts over the past decades have led to a series of regional conflicts, resulting in "a dramatic deterioration of the security situation in the Middle East and Northern Africa, economic decline and massive migration flows."

"Unfortunately, the West has not fulfilled its promises to rebuild the states that suffered from wars and to bring people's life back to normal. That is why Belarus has become a transition point for the refugees. It happened not by the fault of Minsk," Antonov noted.

Antonov also called on the Western countries to abandon the language of sanctions against Belarus and stop politically motivated accusations.

"Let alone the fact that organizers of the human trafficking from the Middle East are in Europe. We believe that the only way out is constructive dialogue with Minsk on the issue," he added.

Lithuania, Latvia and Poland have recently faced an increased number of illegal migrants from the Middle East and Africa on the border with Belarus. The countries have accused Minsk of triggering a migration crisis. In turn, President Lukashenko said that Belarus would no longer keep its borders with the EU closed, as the country has "neither strength nor money" due to Western sanctions.

Meanwhile, Poland has increased the number of security officials amid the emergence of a migrant camp on the Belarusian-Polish border. The Ministry of Defense of Belarus said that Poland's decision to concentrate 23,000 troops, tanks, air defense systems and other heavy weapons near the border with Belarus cannot be called an adequate response to the migration crisis. The department said that it looks more like a creation of shock troops.