The Poland-Belarus crisis fits into a long historical narrative of west versus east

At once heart-rending and alarming, the numbers of would-be asylum seekers and migrants camped out in the Belarus forests in the hope of crossing into Poland has to be one of the more bizarre sights in all the 30 years since the end of the Cold War.

It is heart-rending because of the obvious desperation of people led to believe they had a safe route to a better life in the European Union, then left essentially to fend for themselves in the wintry wilds. But it is alarming because it has produced just the sort of incendiary, highly unpredictable, set of circumstances that, unless quickly defused, could escalate into conflict. Perhaps with one eye on this, authorities in Belarus are now said to have cleared the main camps where people had gathered. State media said they had been moved to a location away from the border.

In the first week or two the crisis was presented by politicians as primarily humanitarian – which, of course, it was. But that presentation also seemed to reflect a deliberate effort to play down its wider implications in the hope that it could be solved at the purely humanitarian level, too. Now that this has not happened, two distinct schools of thought have emerged as to what lies behind it.

There is agreement on the basics: that over the summer travel packages were offered by Belarus, including flights, visas and some accommodation. Not a noted destination for travellers from the war-torn Middle East, Belarus gave buyers to understand that what they were actually getting was a safe route into the EU. Many were provided with one-way transport to the Polish border.

Where the two versions diverge is on where responsibility lies. Is it with Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian president whose legitimacy has been in question since elections in 2020 and who may have learned to “weaponise” migration to gain advantage with the EU. This seems at least partly confirmed by reports of what he supposedly told Angela Merkel in a recent phone call: that the price of a resolution was for the EU to lift its post-election sanctions and drop its refusal to recognise him as president.

The second version sees the sinister hand of Moscow behind everything and Lukashenko as the puppet of Russian president Vladimir Putin. But there are many strands. According to one, Putin wants to drive home to Lukashenko the extent of his weakness and hasten a full union of Russia and Belarus. According to another, “weaponised migration” is just the latest instalment of Putin’s supposed plan to sow disunity in the EU and the west in general. And according to yet another, the crisis is a diversionary tactic as Russia eyes Ukraine. With recent reported troop movements – as noted by US secretary of state, Antony Blinken – illustrating Russia’s penchant for “hybrid” warfare.

For what it is worth, my own view is that Russia is probably as perplexed by events on the Belarus-Poland border as many in the west. Moscow has nothing whatever to gain from any aspect of this crisis; indeed, it has already been damaged to a degree by association. The notion that Lukashenko cannot act without Moscow’s say-so is wrong, as shown by Putin’s reluctance to come to his aid during the post-election protests. Nor is Lukashenko any buddy of Putin: the Russian president reserves a particular contempt for leaders who cannot keep control of their countries, as his abandonment of Ukraine’s Viktor Yanukovych showed. Since the crisis erupted, Putin has uttered not a hint of support for Lukashenko.

At the same time, Putin has also been unusually responsive to western accusations. Noting the number of western military exercises in the Black Sea region, including one held without advance notice, he said that Russia would not react. He has gone out of his way to give chapter and verse as to why Russia is not rigging the European gas market, at one point even ordering Russia’s energy giant, Gazprom, to release more supplies. When Lukashenko threatened to block EU-bound gas deliveries, Putin gave him an unprecedented public dressing down.

Gas, in fact, offers a big clue as to what is at stake for Russia. The Kremlin well knows that any mis-step on its part would prevent the controversial, and now complete, Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline coming into operation, even at this late stage. Russia is also in the early stages of a low-key, but long sought, rapprochement with the US. Moscow would not want anything to derail what it would see as these positive developments.

That said, the situation on the Belarus-Poland border creates dilemmas for the EU as well. After all, if the EU were to comply with its own and international rules on the treatment of asylum seekers, and allow those stranded in Belarus to enter Poland, it would be playing into Lukashenko’s hands. Ongoing disputes between Brussels and Warsaw may also explain why Brussels has not exactly rushed to Warsaw’s aid. A degree of ignorance may suit everyone. The Polish authorities have a freer hand to use methods – such as water cannon – that could contravene EU policy, while allowing Poland to strike its favourite pose as the lone defender of Nato’s eastern flank.

At which point, the evident dangers of a quasi-military confrontation may have prompted the first diplomatic movement. The EU has persuaded some of the transit countries to halt flights; Belarus has provided elementary shelter to many of the would-be migrants, who – unable to reach Poland – threaten to become a problem for Belarus. Germany, meanwhile, has issued what amounts to a warning to Moscow not to create difficulties by suspending the process for licensing Nord Stream 2, citing a regulatory technicality. The final decision on the direct Russia-Germany pipeline, it appears, will now rest with the post-Merkel government – and cooperative behaviour over Belarus.

Even as the immediate standoff may be starting to cool, however, it is worth noting that there was always a wider historical and geopolitical dimension to this crisis. The Belavezh forest, where the drama has been playing out, is where – almost 30 years ago to the month – the leaders of the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and what is now Belarus signed the accords that – in juridical terms – spelled the demise of the Soviet Union.

Signed at the resort of Belovezhskaya Pushcha on 8 December, 1991, the accords were the final nail in the USSR’s coffin, after Mikhail Gorbachev’s failed efforts to establish a Commonwealth of Independent States, after the coup that failed, but nonetheless destroyed his authority, and after the dissolution of the Soviet Communist Party soon thereafter. By mid-December, the rest of what remained of the Soviet Union was seceding, and on 25 December Gorbachev resigned. The Soviet experiment was over.

In this sense, the events taking place at the Belarus-Polish border can be seen – along with the failed uprising against Lukashenko’s election – as the latest of the multiple aftershocks ultimately caused by the Soviet collapse. When it happened, the break-up of the Soviet Union was neither the massive humanitarian disaster nor the bloodbath it so easily could have been.

But it left a myriad of unresolved and still-to-erupt conflicts, and – as the former eastern bloc states joined the institutions of the west – a new east-west divide.

It is a divide that is graphically illustrated by the recent confrontations in the Belavezha forest between the European Union and the last vestiges of the USSR.