Brest railway station. Photo courtesy of the author. All rights reserved.It’s night in Brest. At this hour there isn’t a soul on the streets of this small Belarusian town just a few kilometers from the Polish border. Two men silently exchange glances and cross the bridge over the railway tracks, braving the strong wind. Down there, from the immense Stalin-era railway station, they look like two black dots.
They stop in the hall of the railway station. At first glance, it seems like the place is empty, but wait a moment and you’ll distinguish the figures of women in hijabs, surrounded by a flock of children, among the slender rows of benches in the waiting room. They’re trying to sleep, but every few hours the security guard wakes them. It’ll be a long night.
European attention to the ongoing humanitarian crisis of migration is mostly focused on the Mediterranean. The situation on the European Union’s eastern border barely gets a look-in. Every day, roughly one hundred people fleeing the repressive rule of Ramzan Kadyrov in Chechnya try their luck here, hoping to enter the EU along the so-called Eastern Route through Belarus. Most of them are turned back by Polish border guards and have to stay in Belarus.
