Poland, Baltic States co-responsible for Euro-Atlantic security - PM

Poland and the Baltic States should shoulder the burden of security in the Euro-Atlantic region, the Polish prime minister has said.

In an opinion piece published in Postimees, an Estonian newspaper, Mateusz Morawiecki said the countries, which lie on the both the EU's and Nato's eastern frontier, had to protect their regions "from the East."

"The significance of our region cannot be underestimated today," wrote the prime minister in the article that was published on Tuesday, adding that "it is our common goal today to protect the trans-Atlantic community against an attempt coming from the East to put us in check."

Morawiecki also launched an attack on Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian president, accusing of him of pushing migrants into Poland and the Baltic States as a way to pressure the unity of Western alliances.

"That is why Alexander Lukashenko has been trying to destabilise our internal situation by the artificially orchestrated migration pressure on the borders of the Baltic States," he said.

"He wants to test not only the tightness of our borders as well as those of the EU and Nato, but also the unity of the EU and the North Atlantic Alliance," Morawiecki wrote.

"Lukashenko is playing a cynical game... through the use of trafficking, and acting out a script written in Minsk or Moscow, he hopes that he will be able to bring illegal migrants across the border and trigger another crisis," the Polish prime minister said.

"And he has been doing this at a time, which is not accidental, namely, on the eve of the Russian-Belarusian military exercise Zapad-21 (West-21) and during the difficult evacuation operation from Kabul," he added.

"This is a true test for the Baltic States, for Poland, and for the whole of Europe," Morawiecki concluded.