Lukashenko Demands EU to Pay for Evacuation of Migrants from Belarus

At the Minsk airport, about 200 migrants are waiting to return to Iraq. However, the evacuation flight from Iraq has not yet arrived. The ruler of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko said that the European Union must pay for the repatriation of migrants from Belarus. “If they want to leave, we cannot stop them. We collect them (migrants. - ed.) at the airport. Why was the fly cancelled?" - Lukashenko asked on Thursday, November 25, commenting on the cancellation of an evacuation flight that was supposed to take a group of migrants to Iraq. When he was told that the plane had not arrived due to problems with the flight expenses, Lukashenko replied, “So let the Europeans pay. <...> How much does this flight cost?! And there is no one to pay. Let the European Union pay”. State Secretary of the Security Council of Belarus Alexander Volfovich said earlier that about 200 migrants were waiting for evacuation at the Minsk airport. “According to our information, there was supposed to be an evacuation flight from Iraq today for the return of these refugees who wished to return home. The flight was for some reason cancelled place today. About 200 migrants are at the airport waiting for this flight”, Volfovich said. The provoked migration crisis For many weeks, thousands of migrants who arrived in Belarus from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan have been trying to cross the Belarusian border and enter the territory of the European Union through Poland or the Baltic states. The European Union accuses Alexander Lukashenko of deliberately organizing the delivery of migrants to Belarus in order to then transport them to EU countries. Acting German Chancellor Angela Merkel will discuss the migrant-related situation with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in Berlin on November 25. DW