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Akbar Novruz

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Russia is sending migrants through underground tunnels from Belarus into Europe as part of its hybrid war on the West, AzerNEWS reports via The Telegraph.

Belarus, a Russian puppet state led by dictator Alexander Lukashenko, has used specialists from the Middle East with “a high level of expertise” to design the tunnels, Polish officials have told The Telegraph.

The Great Escape-style tactic marks a new escalation in the Kremlin’s hybrid war on Europe, in which Minsk has tried to send tens of thousands of migrants across Poland’s eastern frontier.

Polish officials said the specialists who designed and dug the tunnels had a “high level of expertise”.

And while experts say it is hard to be sure which groups were involved, they have suggested Kurdish fighters, Islamic State and Iranian-backed proxies as potential culprits.

Poland has also suggested that Belarus resorted to hiring the mysterious Middle Eastern specialists because it was seeking new and more inventive methods of sneaking migrants across the border.

“Officers of the Podlaskie Border Guard Unit have uncovered a total of four tunnels under the border with Belarus, all in 2025,” Lt Col Katarzyna Zdanowicz, from the Polish border force, told The Telegraph.

“Physical and electronic security measures at the border, such as thermal imaging cameras and detection systems, allow us to immediately respond to any attempted violations of the state border, even underground ones,” he added.

Polish authorities discovered one of the largest tunnels, near the village of Narewka in eastern Poland, in mid-December.

It was used by a total of 180 migrants, mainly from Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the majority of them arrested after they emerged on the other side.

According to Poland, the tunnel was 1.5m high with the entrance on the Belarusian side hidden in a forest. The tunnel ran for around 50 metres on the Belarusian side of the border and for 10 metres on the Polish side.