The construction of this 210 kilometer barrier got off to a flying start on Wednesday after the surprise announcement by Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak.
Since then, about 500 meters of barrier, consisting of three parallel fences of razor wire barbed wire, 2.5 meters high and three meters wide, have been built near the village of Zerdziny where military trucks transporting the material follow one another on a muddy path along the border.
Perched on a truck, a soldier drives, using a large hammer, metal poles in the ground wet by passing showers. The sound of the hammer echoed hundreds of yards away. On the Russian side, a dense birch forest leaves nothing to see.
According to Mariusz Blaszczak, this construction comes after “disturbing information” on the launch of flights connecting the Middle East and North Africa with Kaliningrad, information which could not be confirmed by AFP.
The opposition accuses the minister of carrying out a political and propaganda game intended to increase the coast of the conservatives in power in decline before the legislative elections next year.
Mr. Blaszczak swept aside these comments, accusing his opponents of adopting “a pro-Russian position”.
Poland has already set up a physical and electronic barrier, 5.5 meters high and 186 kilometers long along its border with Belarus, an ally of Russia. Its cost is estimated at 350 million euros.
Since the summer of 2021, thousands of migrants and refugees, mainly from the Middle East, have forced or attempted to cross the border with Belarus.
Warsaw and the West have accused the Minsk regime of orchestrating the influx with its Russian ally as part of a “hybrid” attack intended to destabilize the region and the entire EU, a charge denied by the regime of Alexander Lukashenko.
The new barrier along the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad “is an additional element that will help us protect our border, which is also the external border of the EU, against illegal immigration”, Miroslawa Aleksandrowicz told AFP. , spokesman for the border guards of the Mazury region.
“From next year, the barrier must be equipped with cameras and motion detection systems,” she adds.
For the moment, the situation at the border is “stable”.
This year, only 13 people tried to return to Poland from Kaliningrad, including four citizens of Tajikistan in September, she said.
, the field runs along the border.
“They want to scare us but I think it’s exaggerated,” said AFP Marzena Raczewicz, sitting in the kitchen of her house located in Lenkupie, a few kilometers from Zerdziny and 500 meters from the border.
“The barrier will always be an additional element of protection, it will slow down immigration, even if nothing is happening on this border for the moment. We live here in peace,” she told AFP.
His neighbour, Joanna Kozlowska, in her thirties, confirms: “Here everything was calm and quiet and I think it will stay that way”, especially since the border guards patrol the surroundings several times a day.
“At the moment, only wild boars cross into Poland from Kaliningrad,” she adds with a laugh.
In Zytkiejmy, another village in the region, Tadeusz Rydzewski, 72, supports the construction of the barrier”.
“If Putin threatens us then I find it necessary to build it,” he told AFP.
