Estonia's recently-elected president is urging caution over the situation at Belarus's borders with the European Union. Thousands of migrants hoping to enter the EU and claim asylum there, mainly from the Middle East, are camped at the borders. Asked by FRANCE 24 how dangerous he judges the tensions to be, Alar Karis said: "I think it's a threat. It's a border of the EU and of a NATO state. We should be very careful and cautious about what's going on […] Of course the sad thing is that there are innocent people in between that they are using as a shield."
The West says the situation is Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko's revenge for sanctions slapped on his regime since 2020 after its brutal suppression of protests against his rule.
Lukashenko and his main ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin, have rejected the accusations and criticised the EU for not taking in the migrants who are seeking to cross over into Poland.
Poland's prime minister, however, recently asserted that the ferrying of people from the Middle East to the Belarus border was part of a plan to "restore the Russian Empire". Asked about this, President Karis said that in his view, "definitely some strings are pulled from Moscow and probably Lukashenko doesn't do it by himself".
As the EU moved earlier this week to impose new sanctions on "individuals and entities organising or contributing to activities by the Lukashenko regime that facilitate illegal crossing of the EU's external borders", President Karis believes sanctions can be effective but must not be allowed to adversely affect the Belarusian population at large: "It can be effective but in the end probably the ordinary people will suffer, so that's a problem. They can't last long. They have to be effective and truly solve this problem."
President Karis also commented on the increasing rate of Covid-19 infection in Estonia, saying: "We are close to crisis at the moment but I hope it will change in the coming weeks".
Estonia's government recently changed the rules for its Covid-19 health pass, meaning that only people who are vaccinated or have proof of antibodies can access services like sporting events and movie screenings – while people who are unvaccinated are no longer able to access these spaces with a negative PCR test result, as had previously been the case.
Karis says, however, that it's not about forcing people to be vaccinated: "I'm asking people to go and get vaccinated. If you get 85 percent or 90 percent of people vaccinated then it's almost ok."
Meanwhile, as tensions remain between Baltic neighbour Lithuania and China over Lithuania's friendly relations with Taiwan, Karis said it's time to look again at European policy towards Beijing: "Our policy has always been One China policy and we continue with that of course. The problem at the moment is that some countries continue to relate to China in the 16+1 format… we say we should do it together, 27+1."
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Produced by Perrine Desplats, Isabelle Romero, Georgina Robertson and Céline Schmitt
