Despite criticism from NGOs and the Defender of Rights, Poland's centrist prime minister, Donald Tusk, did not back down. On Wednesday, May 21, the Sejm, the lower house of parliament, voted by an overwhelming majority to extend the suspension of the right to asylum at the Belarusian border. Introduced by a decree of the Council of Ministers in March, the measure, initially set for 60 days, can be renewed indefinitely with parliamentary approval.

On Wednesday, Donald Tusk told lawmakers that he wanted to protect Poland from "a certain form of aggression" carried out by "smugglers and gangsters" working in concert with "Russia and Belarus."

Since 2021, Minsk and Moscow have orchestrated a migration crisis at Poland's eastern border, which has persisted despite a decrease in intensity. In addition to diplomatic pressure, Warsaw built a 5.5-meter-high, 186-kilometer-long fence in 2022, which has since been continually reinforced with cameras, motion detectors, barbed wire and the presence of the army assisting border guards with patrols. However, the system was not completely watertight. The Polish Border Guard recorded nearly 30,000 attempts to cross the Belarusian border irregularly in 2024, including 300 in a single day on May 20.

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