Poland has pledged to close its border with Belarus.

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Poland has completed a border fence and aims to close its border with Belarus next summer in what Warsaw says is Russia’s hybrid war to stem the flow of migrants.

Donald Tusk’s government announced earlier this year that additional infrastructure construction along the 400km eastern border will be completed by mid-2025, Poland’s Deputy Migration Minister Maciej Duszczyk said. “This will be as close to 100 percent (border) security as possible,” he said after the reinforcements are completed.

Poland started building a border wall in 2011. At the end of 2021, the rule of President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus began. He facilitated his arrival. Thousands of refugees are about to enter Poland and neighboring Baltic states. Many of these migrants received sponsored flights and visas to fly from the Middle East and Africa to Moscow or Minsk before crossing the Polish border.

Tusk, who took office a year ago, has made fighting Russia’s “hybrid war” a top agenda, including extending and sending more troops to the border with Belarus. His government is spending more than 2.5 billion zlotys (€587mn) on Poland, building a new road to protect the border by installing night vision and thermal cameras, and strengthening a five-meter-high steel fence built by the previous government by 2022. border, half of which is allocated by the Tusk government, Duzczyk said.

“This man-made migration route will be closed next summer, I hope and believe,” Duzczyk said. Still, Warsaw must be prepared for another attempt by Lukashenko to “escalate the conflict” and undermine Poland’s fortified border infrastructure, he said.

He also has Warsaw. They asked EU partners to help them financially. East Shield, a separate military project requested as part of Europe’s own defense against further Russian aggression. Tusk has earmarked 10 billion zlotys for the project, which includes new air surveillance systems, anti-tank barriers and trenches – from Poland’s defense budget, which is slated to receive 4.7 percent of GDP next year, the highest in NATO.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said earlier this month that Brussels would give 170 million euros to neighboring countries of Russia and Belarus to “prevent an unacceptable migration weapon attack from Russia and Belarus.”

In the coming months, Warsaw will build a new road to Russia’s Kaliningrad region, which will allow Polish troops to respond quickly to potential security breaches, Duszczyk said.

But Poland’s crackdown on migration has drawn strong criticism from NGOs, particularly after Tusk announced in October that Warsaw would temporarily suspend asylum rights to discourage those crossing from Belarus.

Duszczyk said Poland’s tough stance is in line with Madrid’s push back against migrants trying to break through the fences in Spain’s North African cities of Ceuta and Melilla.

“If this is a violent group that attacks the fence or the border guards, the EU country can suspend the rights of the asylum request,” said Duszczyk. “Safety is more important than immigration.”