According to Morawiecki, Poland shut down the Bobrowniki crossing due to increasing tension resulting from the Belarusian authorities' actions.
Artur Reszko/PAP

Poland may close more border crossings with Belarus, Mateusz Morawiecki, the Polish prime minister had said.

The warning comes a day after the important crossing at Bobrowniki, north-eastern Poland, was closed by the Polish government until further notice.

The closure has been linked to the jailing earlier this week by a court in Belarus of Andrzej Poczobut. A Polish-Belarusian activist and journalist, Poczobut had been charged with “instigating hatred against religious and national groups, and rehabilitating Nazism.”

He was sentenced to eight years in prison.

“We’re not ruling out the closing of other border crossings with Belarus,” Morawiecki said after an EU summit in Brussels on Friday.

The prime minister did not specify which of the two other border crossings could be shut, although only the one in Koroszczyn-Kukuryki can handle cargo traffic, while the crossing in Terespol is designed for human traffic only.

The Bobrowniki crossing is one of the major transit points between the two countries and was a hotspot during the 2021 migration crisis when thousands of people tried to get into Poland from Belarus.

According to Morawiecki, Poland shut down the Bobrowniki crossing due to increasing tension resulting from the Belarusian authorities’ actions.

Announcing the closure on Twitter on Thursday, the country’s interior minister, Mariusz Kaminski, wrote: “Due to an important interest of state security, I have decided to suspend traffic at the Polish-Belarusian border crossing in Bobrowniki.”

Kaminski also said that following a Polish parliament resolution which condemned the conviction and jailing of Poczobut, he had decided to include more people connected with the regime of Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian president, on a sanctions list.