Tensions rise over Belarus refugee crisis

Poland's defense minister said the refugee crisis on the border with Belarus could last for months, after weeks of tension erupted into violence on Tuesday.

Tear gas and water cannon were used after reports of rocks and stun grenades being thrown toward Polish border guards.

"We have to prepare for the fact that the situation on the Polish-Belarusian border will not be resolved quickly," Mariusz Blaszczak told Radio Jedynka on Wednesday. "We have to prepare for months. I hope not for years."

Poland has accused Belarus, as President Alexander Lukashenko is deemed close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, of engineering a crisis, involving thousands of people mainly from the Middle East, as part of a hybrid attack on the country.

The Belarusian authorities have denied the claims and said that Poland is not allowing people to apply for asylum in the European Union.

Russia's deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Dmitry Polyanskiy, told journalists ahead of an earlier UN Security Council meeting that Western countries "have some kind of masochist inclinations because, to raise this topic, which is a total shame for the EU, in front of us would be very brave".

"It's not the first time that the EU is faced with such a crisis," Polyanskiy said. "One should be mindful of the reasons why these people are fleeing their home countries, who was responsible for this crisis, and what states destroyed their homelands."

In an interview at the weekend, Putin said Russia was "ready to help ... by all means" to resolve the frontier issue, Reuters reported.

The Guardian newspaper quoted the Polish border guard service as saying that on Tuesday it detected"161 attempts at illegal crossing "and nine police officers, one soldier and one border guard were reportedly injured.

EU backs Warsaw

The European Union has expressed solidarity with Poland's attempts to protect the bloc's border, but has also called for increased humanitarian efforts as up to 4,000 migrants are stuck in camps on the Belarusian side of the frontier.

"The Belarusian side is deliberately escalating the situation," said Poland's Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Przydacz. "The situation is unprecedented and unpredictable."

Belta, the state news agency of Belarus, said on Monday that Lukashenko had a 50-minute phone conversation with Germany's outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss the situation on the borders between Belarus and Poland and also those of two other EU states, Lithuania and Latvia, and to find "ways and prospects of resolving" the crisis and preventing its escalation.

The EU has said Moscow could actively help ease migration pressure, and French President Emmanuel Macron discussed the issue with Putin for nearly two hours earlier in the week.

A statement from the Elysee Palace said they had talked about the "need for a humanitarian effort for the migrants" but did not come to any formal conclusions. In the Kremlin's description of the conversation, Putin noted "the extremely harsh treatment of refugees by Polish border guards".

Germany has been one of the biggest recipients of refugees in the EU, but when asked if he would back the country taking in people already at the border if it stopped the flow of migrants to Belarus, the country's Foreign Minister Heiko Maas rejected the idea.

The EU is preparing more sanctions on Belarus, which EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said was an effort "to stand up to the instrumentalization of migrants for political purposes... this inhuman and illegal practice".

On Tuesday, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said he's concerned about the situation in Belarus.