Poland has increased the number of troops on the border with Belarus to 11 thousand.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that Poland had spent PLN 2.7 billion on the construction of the border barrier.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, along with Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosyniak-Kamysh and Interior Minister Tomasz Siemoniak, visited a section of the Polish border with Belarus on Saturday.

After meeting with the command of the Polish army, border guard and police, the prime minister said he had received a report confirming that migrant smuggling across the border is being carried out with the support of the Lukashenko regime.

“We are also aware of Russia’s involvement, so we are dealing not only with smuggling, but also with the state machine,” Tusk said.

He also said that he had received reports of further arrests of people involved in the smuggling of illegal migrants. The Polish prime minister added that those were international groups.

At the same time, he emphasized that Polish services were quite effective in detaining smugglers.

“We have achieved 98 percent efficiency in detentions, which means that 98 attempts to illegally cross the border were prevented thanks to the resolute position of our soldiers, the Border Guard and the police,” Tusk said.

He emphasized that 11 thousand people were on duty at the border. He added that Poland had spent PLN 2.7 billion on the construction of the border barrier.

Earlier, Tusk announced that the decision to suspend the right to asylum for migrants crossing the border through Belarus would soon come into force.

However, the EU later actually supported Poland’s intentions. The suspension of asylum is the latest stage of Poland’s tough migration policy, which it is pursuing in response to hybrid pressure from Belarus.

In 2021, tens of thousands of people tried to cross the Polish border with Belarus, which sent them there in response to the sanctions imposed on Minsk.