Poland has recorded a sharp decrease in the number of attempted illegal border crossings from Belarus — there have been about 472 since the beginning of the year, compared with more than 25,000 during the same period in 2025. This was reported by Polish Ministry of the Interior spokesperson Renata Leoniak during a parliamentary committee meeting, LRT reports, as cited by UNN.
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As of September 13, the Polish Border Guard had registered about 472 attempted illegal border crossings. In all cases, the migrants were not allowed to enter the country.
By comparison, during the same period in 2025, the number of such attempts exceeded 25,000.
Migration flows have changed direction
According to Leoniak, only one case was recorded during this period in which a migrant managed to break through the engineering barriers. He was detained. A year earlier, there had been 1,529 such incidents.
The Polish Interior Ministry representative noted that migration flows had shifted to the Lithuanian-Belarusian and Latvian-Belarusian borders. Against this backdrop, Poland reintroduced controls and expanded the buffer zone on the border with Lithuania.
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Leoniak also reported an increase in attempts to smuggle cigarettes using weather balloons. According to her, this trend emerged after Minsk introduced a ban on the use of civilian drones.
At the end of August, Warsaw expanded the buffer zone along the border for the seventh time since it was introduced in June 2024. The zone, with strict restrictions and enhanced controls, extends for more than 78 km along the Polish-Belarusian border.