Poland aims to complete a border wall and seal off its border with Belarus by next summer, in order to stop an influx of migrants Warsaw describes as Russia’s hybrid war.

The additional infrastructure works along its 400km eastern border that the government of Donald Tusk announced earlier this year are on track to be completed by mid-2025, said Maciej Duszczyk, Poland’s deputy minister for migration. Once the reinforcements are complete, “this will be as close to 100 per cent [border] security as is possible,” he said.

Poland started building a border wall in late 2021, when the Belarus regime of President Alexander Lukashenko first facilitated the arrival of thousands of migrants to enter Poland and neighbouring Baltic states. Many of these migrants received sponsored flights and visas to fly from the Middle East and Africa to Moscow or Minsk before being bussed to the Polish border.