• BIRN is a network of non-governmental organizations that promote freedom of speech, human rights, and democratic values ​​in Southern and Eastern Europe.

The Polish Gazeta Wyborcza writes about a new investigation into the way of migrants to the European Union.

The employees of the Balkan Investigation Network asked about the new route of the 35-year-old citizen of Syria, whose name was marked with the letter S. He has been waiting for more than a month in a hotel in Minsk, when he will be able to continue his journey to the European Union.

He got to Minsk via Moscow: by two planes and five cars.

From that moment he waits for communication with his guide.

There are 9 other people in the hotel room with him.

At the end of October, the man received a Russian tourist visa for one month, which allows him to enter the Russian Federation once.

In the first days of November, he was already at Moscow's Domodedovo airport, where he flew from Iraqi Idlib via Dubai.

In Moscow, he contacted a smuggler who promised to take him to Germany.

"S.

one of the thousands of migrants who tried to get to the EU this year by a new version of the route that Frontex (the European Border and Coast Guard Agency) calls the "eastern land route" that leads through Moscow towards the border of Belarus and the EU.

90% of migrants at the Polish border have Russian visas," writes Gazeta Wyborcza.

After the airlines of a number of countries restricted flights to Minsk at the end of last year at the request of Brussels, the number of attempts to cross the Polish-Belarusian border decreased from the maximum level of 17,000 in October 2021 to 1,000 in the winter months of last year.

Previously, most migrants had Belarusian visas in their passports.

But, since the summer of this year, Polish activists who help refugees at the border fix their mainly Russian visas.

Based on conversations with migrants, employees of travel agencies that offer Russian visas, and smugglers who transport migrants from Moscow to the border with the EU, as well as documents presented by them and advertisements published on the Internet by travel agencies and smugglers, BIRN described for the first time the functioning of the new variant of the eastern route.

Having reached Moscow, S. waited for two days until the smuggler sent a car to take him to Belarus.

It took about 12 hours for the group to reach Minsk.

On the way, they changed cars four times.

According to the Syrian, he has already made two attempts to get to Poland.

Last time, after three days in the forest and sleeping under the snow, they finally reached the fence on the Belarusian border.

"The Belarusians caught us, beat us, took everything we had, money and personal belongings," S. describes his second attempt to get to Poland.

- This is a very difficult path.

We call it the road of death, because we really saw death there very close.

Now the man is going to try to get to Poland for the third time and is waiting in a Minsk hotel for a call from a guide.

Travel agencies offering Russian visas advertise extensively on Facebook, targeting Iraqis and other Middle Easterners.

Some simply sell visas, while others do it under the banner of "treatment in Russia."

And some simply post photos of customers who were able to get to Moscow airports.

During a telephone conversation with two independent travel agents working in Iraq, a BIRN correspondent introduced himself as a migrant who needed a Russian visa.

He was offered identical packages: 2.5-3 thousand dollars each for a Russian visa.

They promised to do it within a month after submitting passport information.

Younger migrants can count on a student visa, older ones on a tourist visa.

Each type of visa requires an invitation or a letter from a sponsor from Russia - from the university in the case of a student or from the receiving party in the case of a tourist.

Migrants themselves buy plane tickets - now they can fly from Iraq via Dubai, but the travel agency promises that a Russian will meet them at the airport and give them an invitation, without which they will not be given visas.

From the travel agency's posts on social networks, it is clear that the same Russian citizen appears in the invitations for many migrants, for whom the travel agency issues visas.

Before departure, the migrant transfers the money to a trusted person or to an agreed currency exchange point, and the travel agency collects it when it receives confirmation that the migrant is already at a Russian airport.

The entire trip from Iraq to Germany costs 6 thousand dollars.

It leads from Moscow to Belarus.

The way through Kaliningrad is more difficult.

- In Kaliningrad, there are places where it is forbidden to enter, and if someone ends up there by mistake, the Russian who issued him a visa will be punished, - says one of the migrants, who claims that he personally checked the way through Kaliningrad.

A more difficult and demanding road through the Russian-Finnish border.

Therefore, almost everyone prefers the "Belarusian" way.

According to the Balkan Investigative Network, the leader of the group of smugglers remotely controls local drivers and smugglers from Russia and Belarus from his homestead in the Middle East.

The only thing smugglers cannot guarantee to migrants is that they will be able to cross the Belarusian-Polish border.

A wall with a length of almost 200 kilometers and a height of 5.5 meters runs along the border, equipped with motion sensors and cameras.

For the past year and a half, the border service of Poland has been systematically pushing out migrants detained while crossing the border, regardless of age, nationality and health status.

But even if they manage to reach Poland, the local police can still detain them on the way to Germany and return them back to Belarus.

BIRN employees believe that at least 30 migrants have already died on the Belarusian-Polish border.

According to non-governmental organizations, about 200 people are considered missing.

Despite all these risks, many still embark on the perilous journey.

This year, in October and November, the border service of Poland recorded more than 2,000 attempts to cross the Polish-Belarusian border per month.

There were fewer of them in December.

About 50 people try to get out of Belarus in a day.

Most often, they cross the icy border rivers: Svislach, Perevaloka or Lesnaya, they go through swamps and bays where there is no border fence.