Poland is planning further reinforcements on its eastern border, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Saturday, pointing to growing pressure from neighbouring Belarus.
Tusk visited the area and spoke about the organized migration coming from Belarus as well as the growing threat posed by Russia's war on Ukraine.
"We have begun intensive work on a modern fortification that is to be built along Poland's entire eastern border," said Tusk in front of border guards and soldiers in Karakule on the Polish-Belarusian border.
Poland's eastern border is also the EU's external border, so all must invest in the fortification, he said.
In the summer of 2022, Poland secured the land sections of its 418-kilometre border with Belarus with a 5.5-metre fence and an electronic surveillance system, after groups of migrants were brought to the area in what many saw as an orchestrated attempt by Minsk to undermine security in the EU.
Polish Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz recently said that his country would build bunkers and trenches on its border with Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.
Relations between Poland, an EU and NATO member state, and authoritarian Belarus, which is allied with Moscow, have been tense for some time.
Poland is one of the most important military supporters of Ukraine, which is under attack from Russia.
Poland and the EU have accused Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko of systematically bringing migrants from crisis regions to the EU's external border since 2021 in order to exert pressure on the West.
Tensions between the two countries recently increased further at the start of the week, when a Polish judge fled to Belarus and asked for asylum there.
As he also had access to secret documents, the Polish public prosecutor's office is now investigating him on suspicion of working for a foreign intelligence service.