The EU’s growing migrant war with Belarus

The EU is building a wall — and they’re going to make Belarus pay for it. This week, the tiny Baltic nation of Lithuania began erecting a barbed-wire border fence on its frontier with its neighbour, Europe’s most notorious autocracy. Meanwhile, Brussels is ramping up economic sanctions against Belarus.

Lithuania’s parliament has declared a state of emergency, citing a sharp rise in migrants attempting to illegally cross the border. More than 800 made the journey in the first week of July alone, coming from countries like Iraq, Iran, Syria and the Congo. In response, hundreds of troops have been deployed and construction of a 340-mile barrier is underway. The EU’s newly established border agency, Frontex, has also agreed to step in to deal with the ‘urgent and exceptional pressure’, dispatching its own officers and patrol cars.

It seems Brussels’s former refugee policy is now ancient history. In 2015, member states were divided by Hungary’s decision to erect an electrified fence on its border with Serbia and Croatia.