WARSAW, Poland — Polish police said Saturday that the body of a young Syrian man was found in the woods near the border with Belarus, the latest victim in a political standoff at the European Union’s eastern border.
The regime in Minsk has for months been encouraging illegal migration across its border into the EU nations of Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. All three countries are reinforcing their frontiers, seeking to block the newly opened migration route, and the situation is growing more dangerous as winter approaches.
Polish police said the body of a Syrian man about 20 years old was found a day earlier near the village of Wólka Terechowska. They said the exact cause of death could not be determined and that an autopsy would be performed.
It brings the death toll now to at least nine reported victims in the migration encouraged by Belarus’ longtime President Alexander Lukashenko.
Many of the migrants are from Syria, Iraq, or elsewhere in the Middle East, people seeking to flee conflict and hopelessness for the prospect of better lives in Europe.
The crisis is creating another point of tension between the West and Belarus, and by extension with its closest ally: Russia.
Though Russia this week sent nuclear-capable strategic bombers and paratroopers to patrol over Belarus in a show of support, Russian President Vladimir Putin denied allegations of being involved in creating the flow of migrants to Europe.
“I want everyone to know that we have nothing to do with it. Everyone is trying to impose any responsibility on us for any reason and for no reason at all,” Putin said in excerpts released Saturday of an interview with state television that is to be broadcast in full on Sunday.
He said that no Russian aviation companies carry the migrants to Belarus, and also lashed out at the West as a root cause for the crisis, with military operations in Iraq and elsewhere that have led to continued conflict in the region.