The Minsk government has recently shown signs of adopting a softer stance over the impasse, with the Belarusian leader Aleksander Lukashenko saying Belarus is ready to “regulate relations” but saying that Poland is not taking “any reciprocal steps,” while Foreign Minister Maksim Ryzhenkov said that Poland had no interest in finding a solution.

Belarus’s overtures have prompted the Polish foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, to stipulate conditions for any thawing of relations. The first condition is for Belarus to cease the migratory pressure at the border, a ministry spokesman said, while admitting that the number of crossing attempts had reduced recently.

Another of Warsaw’s stipulations is that the Belarusian authorities investigate the fatal stabbing of a soldier in late May, who subsequently died of his injuries in early June, leading to tensions between the countries reaching new heights.

“There are indications that the offender is known by the [Belarusian] side,” Paweł Wroński told Poland’s national press agency, PAP. “And that would be a start.”

The third condition is the release of Polish journalist and political activist Andrzej Poczobut, who has been imprisoned in Belarus in a case Poland considers to be political persecution.

Wroński said Poland was waiting for “the first real step” from Belarus.

A waiting game

Poland’s interior minister, Tomasz Siemoniak, was also asked at a Wednesday press conference about the prospects for a thaw in relations. He reiterated the foreign ministry’s position that Minsk had to make the first move.

“If Belarus releases Andrzej Poczobut, starts to work with Poland on the issue of the murder of Sergeant Mateusz Sitek and stops facilitating pressure at the border, these will doubtless be signals that will enable a more pragmatic shaping of these relations on Poland’s part,” he said, adding that the matter fell within the remit of the foreign ministry.

PAP cited independent Belarusian newspaper Nasha Niva as saying Poland’s main instrument for pressuring Belarus was the flow of goods across the border. The paper also pointed out that the border crisis was raised by Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, during a trip to China. This was followed by a “signal” from Warsaw, the paper’s website claimed, in the form of detailed inspections of goods at a crossing point key to the import of goods from China.

Following the inspections, Nasha Niva reported, the number of illegal crossing attempts fell. The paper has also said, citing unofficial information from human rights groups, that Minsk has freed about 20 political prisoners, though Andrzej Poczobut was not among them.

Numerous sources of tensions

Relations between Poland and Belarus have been strained since before Minsk’s collaboration with Russia in its war against Ukraine. Warsaw has accused the Alexander Lukashenko regime of orchestrating a migration crisis at the two countries’ common border since 2021 in an attempt to destabilize both Poland and the EU in retaliation for sanctions. The Polish government claims Belarusian authorities have lured thousands of migrants from the Middle East and Africa with false promises of easy access to the EU via Poland and Lithuania.