Belarus on Friday condemned as 'catastrophic' a decision by Poland to close a border checkpoint between the two countries, saying it could lead to a collapse on both sides of the border.
After the closure comes into force, only two of six major land crossing points along the two countries' 400-km border will be open, the border force said.
"With the closure of another Polish checkpoint, the situation will become catastrophic," it added, pointing to existing long lines at border crossings. "The load on the remaining two checkpoints will critically increase." Minsk also said it believed the decision was purposefully designed to "further aggravate the situation at the border and limit citizens' travel"."We are not excluding closing other border crossings with Belarus," he told a news conference in Brussels. "The reason for this is that there are growing tensions with Belarus and they are being instrumentalised by the Russians and the Kremlin.
Thousands of people of Polish origin live in Belarus given that the west of the country was Polish territory until borders were redrawn after World War Two.
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