Russia Sends Bombers Over Belarus, Blames EU FOr Migrant Crisis

Russia Sends Bombers To Fly Over Belarus After Poland Claims Moscow "Masterminded" Migrant Crisis

TYLER DURDEN

With the still chaotic and unraveling Belarus-Poland border situation becoming a full-blown crisis for the European Union, which is now threatening further sanctions on the Lukashenko government, the ex-Soviet Republic's key powerful ally Russia is jumping into the fray.

The Kremlin has lashed out, saying it's the European Union that's to blame for the migrant crisis due its attempting to "strangle" Belarus. 

This as the EU is readying fresh sanctions, with plans to close a big part of the border altogether. Russia was specifically responding to Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki's Tuesday comments saying the migrant crisis "has its mastermind in Moscow".

Given that most of the migrants who on Monday and Tuesday sought to break across barbed-wire border fences (which was allegedly encouraged by Belarusian security forces) are from the Middle East, Moscow urged the West to look at the "big picture" of how it's their own policies which created the crisis in the first place. 

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova gave the Kremlin's official response, also after EU officials began pointing the finger at Russia for backing Lukashenko: "Let’s not pretend it started yesterday. The situation at the EU eastern border is just a part of the big picture. A failure to see it, to understand it and admit it - that’s what constitutes the twisting of facts and lying. Lying of the worst kind that can ever exist - lying to themselves,’" she said.

And further according to TASS:

There are many examples, the spokeswoman said. "The destruction of the Iraqi statehood, which happened due to the actions of the US administration and allied states, caused tectonic shifts in the region. 

The West-sponsored ‘’Arab spring,’’ the NATO campaign against Libya, the interference of the collective West in the affairs of Syria and the support of international terrorism there and, most importantly, the emergence of ISIS (the former name of the IS terrorist group, which is banned in Russia) on the ruins of the Iraqi state - all that has led to a mass exodus of refugees and migrants from that part of the world to Europe...," Zakharova said.

The ratcheting rhetoric, blame-game, and continued finger pointing is now resulting in more direct means of muscle-flexing as on Wednesday Russia sent a pair of long-range bombers over Belarus in coordination with Minsk. 

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