Western members of the UN Security Council have condemned Belarus for the escalating crisis over migrants stranded on its border with Poland.
In a statement, they accused Belarus of using the migrants to destabilise the European Union’s eastern border.
Russia, Belarus’s main ally, rejected the accusation.
Earlier, Belarus’s authoritarian leader threatened to cut off gas supplies to Europe if new sanctions were imposed.
Thousands of people, many of them Kurds arriving from the Middle East, are camping at the border with Poland, enduring freezing conditions in the hope of crossing into the EU. The migrants are mainly young men – but there are also women and children.
Crowds have tried to cut through a barbed wire fence to enter Poland this week – only to be pushed back by Polish border guards and the army. However, some migrants have managed to slip through.
At Thursday’s emergency UN Security Council meeting, Western member states issued a joint statement, accusing Belarus of putting migrants’ lives in danger “for political purposes”.
They also said Belarus was trying to divert “attention away from its own increasing human rights violations”.
The statement was issued by France, the UK and the US, all permanent Council members. They were joined by Albania, Estonia and the Republic of Ireland.
Russia rejected the accusations and blamed Poland and neighbouring Lithuania for mistreating migrants. The five permanent members of the US Security Council all have the right to veto resolution.
“There are a lot of cases when Polish and Lithuanian border guards beat migrants and pushed them back to Belarusian territory,” said the Russian deputy ambassador to the UN, Dmitry Polyanskiy.
“I would say that this is total shame and a total violation of any possible international conventions and rules.”
