- Joined
- Aug 25, 2021
- Messages
- 11,000
- Reaction score
- 26,788
The attack came shortly before dawn.
Dozens of illegal migrants on the Belarusian side of the border with Poland hurled a volley of makeshift spears at Polish border guards through the 16 foot high steel fence.
Some fell short of their targets and as the security forces picked them up they saw what appeared to be a tree branch with a steel blade taped to the top.
Several were injured in the bombardment and one - Sgt Mateusz Sitek, a 21-year-old from the village of Nowy Lubiel - lost his life.
They are moving with the quiet helping hand of Russia, Polish officials believe, the latest axis in Vladimir Putin’s asymmetric hybrid war with the West.
Russia has long waged hybrid warfare on Europe’s doorstep with a combination of cyber attacks and disinformation.
It began weaponising migration three years ago, working with travel agents in the Middle East to encourage migrants to visit with the promise of a gateway to the EU.
As The Telegraph reported earlier this year, these migrants are increasingly controlled by private Wagner-like Russian militias.
“He was a very, very good boy,” one person told The Telegraph at his funeral in a small church where friends, family and the Polish president gathered to pay their respects.
As well as training and controlling increasingly violent migration flows into Poland, Russia has also upped its destabilising techniques elsewhere along its border with Europe.
On the Finnish-Russian border Russia has been handing out bicycles and foot-scooters to migrants to help them cross over.
The Kremlin’s influence over a number of the main routes into the continent stirred fears earlier this year that Russia would be intensifying its efforts.
Intelligence documents detailed plans for Russian agents to set up a “15,000-man strong border police force” comprising former militias in Libya to control the flow of migrants.
In Poland, arguments between migrants and border guards have now turned into full-blown skirmishes, culminating in the latest fatal attack.
Pawel Zabrocki, chief of police in the nearby town of Hajnowka,

said that, since April this year, his team of 370 police officers have stopped at least 537 people trying to cross the border illegally.
A Syrian migrant on the Belarusian side of the border wall with Poland