Migrants threaten from the east. EU from the west. The Polish government has developed war rhetoric.

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NEWS ANALYSIS: Belarus uses migrants in a major political game. People are flown to Minsk. Then soldiers follow them to the border and push them into the EU. The pressure is highest on Poland. Many get on to Germany. Polish police transport others back to the cordoned-off border area.

In practice, the EU could admit a few thousand migrants. One could thus choose, as a comment in the German newspaper Die Welt points out, to let them seek asylum. Then the weapon of the Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko would not work.

But Europe is vulnerable to blackmail. Following the refugee crisis, the EU still has no common line.