Stanisław Żaryn made the statement in an interview with Poland's PAP news agency on Thursday.
He told the Polish state news agency that an increasing number of foreign nationals trying to enter Poland illegally from Belarus turn out to have arrived from Russia.
“More and more of those who try to cross illegally into the European Union speak good Russian and have years-long links with Russian territory,” Żaryn said.
“The migration route from Russia to Belarus is steadily gaining importance in the hybrid operation against Poland,” he warned.
He added: “The creation by the Belarusian services of an illegal migration route to Europe is part of a wider Russian plan designed to sow chaos in the countries of Central Europe and disrupt the unity of NATO and the European Union.”
He also said in the interview that "restoring small border traffic with the Kaliningrad region under such circumstances would give Russia an additional opportunity to engage in hybrid activity towards Poland and, in fact, towards the whole of EU and NATO."
'Kremlin doesn’t respect state borders'
Moreover, “Russia’s aggressive policies in relation to Ukraine and other countries show that the Kremlin doesn’t respect state borders,” Żaryn told the PAP news agency.
“Since 2014, Russia has been occupying Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and the country’s eastern regions,” he said.
“It pursues similar policy towards Moldova and Georgia,” he added.
In recent months, Russia has been escalating military tensions around Ukraine, “deliberately boosting threats at the Ukrainian-Russian and Ukrainian-Belarusian borders,” according to Żaryn.
“All these facts remind us that Russia is not a state that can be trusted and treated by the West as a guarantor of contracts and agreements,” Żaryn said.
He added: “Russia currently represents a serious threat to peace in central Europe.”
He was quoted as saying by PAP that "under the present situation, continued suspension of small border traffic with Kaliningrad appears to be the only possible solution."
Poland suspended small border traffic with the Kaliningrad enclave in 2016 as a national security precaution ahead of that year’s NATO summit in Warsaw.
Tensions over Ukraine
In recent days, planes carrying US troops and army equipment have landed in Poland as part of efforts to bolster NATO's eastern flank and reinforce allies in Eastern Europe amid a Russian military buildup near Ukraine.
Russia has amassed more than 100,000 troops around Ukraine in recent weeks, according to media reports, raising fears in the West that Moscow may be preparing for a new invasion of the country.
Moscow has denied plans for an assault but says it could take unspecified military action if its security demands are not met, the Reuters news agency has reported.
Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 and then fomented a separatist conflict in that country's eastern Donbas region, leading to a wave of EU and US sanctions against Moscow and Russian officials.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP