Slovakia Offers Poland Help In Protecting Border Against Illegal Migrants

Slovakia is ready to deploy border guards to Poland as assistance in protecting the border with Belarus from illegal migrants, Slovak parliamentary speaker Boris Kollar said on Wednesday

WARSAW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th October, 2021) Slovakia is ready to deploy border guards to Poland as assistance in protecting the border with Belarus from illegal migrants, Slovak parliamentary speaker Boris Kollar said on Wednesday.

"Slovakia is ready to send a certain contingent of police or Border Guard officers, as it did earlier in the case of Macedonia, if there is such a need on the Polish side," Kollar said.

As the Polish border is part of the external borders of the European Union's Schengen Area, within which 26 member states have opened their internal borders for the unrestricted movement of people, Kollar stressed that the Slovak contingent, if sent to Poland, will be "guarding the border of not only Poland but the entire Schengen zone.

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Over the past seven weeks, the Polish Border Guard has reported over 18,000 attempts by illegal migrants to cross from Belarus. Over 6,000 such attempts were recorded in October alone.

Since August, when Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said EU sanctions left Minsk with no resources to restrain the flow of migrants to the EU any longer, Poland, as well as neighboring Lithuania and Latvia, have reported an increase in illegal crossing attempts. They accuse Belarus of encouraging the migration, which Minsk denies.