Soldier dies after knife attack on Belarusian border – DW – 06.06.2024

A Polish soldier who was stabbed to death on the country’s border with Belarus in May has succumbed to his injuries, the Polish military said on Thursday.

It was said that the soldier was allegedly stabbed in the chest by a migrant who reached through a fence erected at the border to prevent illegal border crossings.

The Polish Foreign Ministry said it had summoned the Belarusian chargé d’affaires and demanded that the Minsk authorities extradite the soldier’s killer.

Poland and the EU claim that many of the migrants trying to enter the country are organized and supported by Russia and its ally Belarus in an effort to destabilize Europe.

The perpetrator of the attack has yet to be identified.

Polish Prime Minister expresses his condolences

“A young soldier, Mateusz, gave his life defending the border of the Republic of Poland,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

“The fatherland and his countrymen will never forget this sacrifice. I express my deepest condolences to his family.”

After the knife attack in May, Warsaw announced it would invest more than 2.3 billion euros (2.5 billion dollars) in strengthening its eastern border and reintroducing a 200-meter-wide buffer zone.

“It is the Russian state … that is behind the organization of recruitment, transportation and attempts to smuggle thousands of people into Europe,” Tusk said immediately after the knife attack.

Poland erected a 5.5-meter-high fence and an electronic surveillance system in 2022. But according to the Polish Border Guard, there were already more than 17,000 attempts to cross the border in the first five months of 2024.

Soldiers charged with various border incidents

A media report on Wednesday also revealed that two Polish soldiers had been charged over a separate incident in March.

The soldiers are said to have first fired warning shots into the air and then into the ground at migrants who tried to cross the border by force.

No one was injured and government officials expressed dismay and said the arrests were excessive under the circumstances.

Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said the military police had overreacted and demanded clarification from them and the investigating prosecutors.

In response, prosecutors said on Thursday that footage of the shooting did not show any threat to the soldiers’ lives.

km/sm (dpa, AP, AFP)