28 2GM Wednesday November 10 2021 | the times
Wo r l d
Groups of migrants have chopped down trees to flatten the fence at flashpointsAn American nuclear artillery unit has
been reactivated in Germany for the
first time since the Cold War and is to be
armed with new long-range hypersonic
weapons.
The 56th Artillery Command based
in Mainz-Kastel will control the Dark
Eagle weapon, which when fully devel-
oped will be capable of accelerating to
nearly 4,000mph, more than five times
the speed of sound (about 761mph). The
reactivation reflects growing concerns
in the Pentagon that Russia has suc-
ceeded in outgunning the US and Nato
in Europe with longer-range artillery
rockets and its own hypersonic weap-
ons.
The command was stood down in
1991 when the Soviet Union broke up
and after its main weapon, the Pershing
II ballistic missile, was banned under
launcher systems mounted on trailers
were delivered in September to an army
base in Washington state for troops to
begin training programmes.
The Pentagon has previously con-
firmed that three tests of “hypersonic
technologies, capabilities and proto-
type systems” linked to Dark Eagle
have been carried out successfully.
However, last month a hypersonic
missile test in Alaska failed when theThousands of migrants and soldiers are
facing off on opposite sides of Poland’s
border with Belarus, prompting Euro-
pean leaders to warn that the standoff
risks escalating into a “serious conflict”.
Poland has accused President Luka-
shenko of encouraging tens of thou-
sands of migrants from the Middle East,
Asia and Africa to breach its borders in
the past few months in retaliation for
sanctions levelled by the European
Union against his regime. In Germany,
a senior minister has accused Turkey
and Russia of stoking the crisis in a con-
certed effort to “destabilise the West”.
Isolated groups of migrants have
been trying to cross the 250-mile for-
ested frontier into the EU for months
but the push has now become a much
larger, state-sponsored operation.
Mateusz Morawiecki, the Polish
prime minister, said last night that
President Putin of Russia was using
Belarus as a proxy to “implement the
scenario of rebuilding the Russian em-
pire”. He added: “This is the first situa-
tion in 30 years [since the fall of com-
munism] when the security and integri-
ty of our borders is being attacked so
brutally. We are dealing not only with
violence but with a staged show, the aim
of which is to violate borders, to intro-
duce chaos in Poland and the EU.”
Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign
minister, suggested that the EU could
end the crisis by paying Belarus to keep
the migrants away. He cited the 2016
deal under which Brussels sent Turkey
£5.1 billion to maintain
refugee camps and keep
three million Syrians out.
The Polish authorities fear that Bela-
rus could seek to provoke military skir-
mishes. Border guards have already re-
ported a number of close encounters,
including one in which Belarusian sol-
diers threatened to shoot Polish troops.
The Belarus defence ministry retortedthat the Poles had vio-
lated bilateral agreements
by deploying thousands of sol-
diers to the border.
As many as 4,000 migrants have
gathered on the Belarusian side. An in-
formal camp has formed along the
fence, with some migrants trying to get
through by cutting down trees to flatten
the wires, or using cutters and spades.Polish police have dodged stones and
responded with teargas.
Michal Tokarczyk, a spokesman for
the Polish border guard, said that a
group of about a hundred migrants
successfully breached the fence near
the village of Czeremcha, 90 miles
south of Kuznica.
About 500 migrants were allegedly
transported by the Belarusian author-ities from the Polish border to that with
Lithuania, near the town of Kapciami-
estis. Lithuania has also faced a surge in
illegal entries in past months.
Poland has recorded more than
30,000 illegal attempts to cross its bor-
der in the past three months, compared
with only 120 for the whole of 2020. The
government is under pressure to seek
help from Frontex, the EU border agen-Republican
The millionaire author JD Vance, who
is running for a Senate seat in Republi-
can colours, has ducked out of two
debates that threatened to highlight his
past criticism of Donald Trump.
Vance’s attempts to disavow remarks
from 2016 that Trump was “an idiot”,
“reprehensible” and “noxious” have
fallen flat as he faces a barrage of
attacks from Trump loyalists
The creator of Hillbilly Elegy, recently
adapted for a Hollywood movie, is the
latest Republican candidate to find his
views coming back to haunt him, des-
pite efforts by the party’s senior figures
to sideline the former president.
Republican leaders have urged mem-
bers to move on from last year’s election
defeat and look forward to the
midterms next year. The party needs to
swing only a handful of seats to takeUnited States
Hugh Tomlinson WashingtonCold War base to become hypersonic missile HQ
the Intermediate-Range Nuclear
Forces (INF) treaty. However, the
treaty was abandoned by the Trump
administration in 2019 after it accused
Russia of violating the terms.
Apart from Dark Eagle, the 56th
Artillery Command is also expected to
receive a ground-launched version of
the US navy’s Tomahawk land attack
cruise missile.
General Stephen Maranian, com-
manding general of the artillery unit,
said that the reactivation would “pro-
vide the US army, Europe and Africa
with significant capabilities in multi-
domain operations”. Germany hosts
America’s commands for both conti-
nents.
Maranian spoke of plans to deploy
“future long-range surface-to-surface”
missiles, a reference to the expected
arrival of hypersonic weapons in
Europe. Although no hypersonic weap-
ons are ready for deployment, the firstbooster rocket with the hypersonic
glide vehicle attached failed to launch.
The 56th Artillery Command con-
trolled Nato’s nuclear deterrent on
mainland Europe during the Cold War.
Much of its weaponry was removed
after the signing of the INF and the fall
of the Berlin Wall: its Pershing II missil-
es, which had been deployed in 1983 to
counter Russia’s mobile nuclear-armed
SS-20 systems, were withdrawn, along
with ground-launched nuclear cruise
missiles in Britain and elsewhere.
However, there is now a new arms
race since the US withdrew from the
INF over the development by Russia of
its SSC-8 cruise missile, first tested in- Nato estimated the SSC-8’s range
to be 1,900 miles; Moscow claimed that
its range was only 300 miles — below
the INF limits of 310 to 620 miles for
short-to-medium-range missiles and
620 to 3,420 miles for intermediate-
range systems.
Germany
Michael Evans
AUSTRIABerlinFrankfurt100 milesPOLANDCZECH
REP.GERMANY56th Artillery
Command
Mainz-KastelUKRAINETURKEYBELARUSPOLANDMinsk200 milesWarsawIstanbulKuznicaTurkey accused of
permitting migrants
to fly to BelarusLITHUANIAPutin accused of pulling strings
Poland
Maria Wilczek Warsaw
Oliver Moody Berlin
Strongmen
delight in
disorder
Analysis
G
ermany
and Poland
have
accused
President
Putin of working with
Belarus to escalate
the humanitarian
crisis on the EU’s
eastern flank (Marc
Bennetts writes).
Yet while Russia is
seeking to portray the
drama unfolding on
the Belarusian-Polish
border as the result of
western military
campaigns in the
Middle East and
North Africa, there is
no evidence Putin, 69,
is orchestrating
events. Indeed, the
Kremlin knows
that President
Lukashenko of
Belarus, 67,
the dictator
who recently
crushed a
popularprotest, is more than
capable of wreaking
chaos without any
help. The former
Soviet farm boss may
rely on Russian loans
to prop up his regime
but he is no Kremlin
puppet, and has
resisted efforts by
Russia, which views
Belarus as a vital
buffer against Nato, to
swallow up his
country.
Notoriously
unpredictable,
Lukashenko angered
Russia in refusing to
recognise its rule in
Crimea, which it
annexed in 2014, and
flatly rejecting a
request for a Russian
military airbase in
Belarus. He warned
that Belarus would
“flood” Europe with
migrants in
retaliation for EUsanctions against his
regime over the
forced landing of a
Ryanair plane in May.
He is making good on
his threat.
For Putin it is
simpler, and far less
risky, to sit back and
exploit the havoc on
the EU’s border while
also hoping that
events will sow
discord among
western countries.
Moscow has said
the migrant crisis is
payback for Poland’s
participation in the
US-led invasion of
Iraq in 2003, and that
it should accept “at
least as many grateful
Iraqis” as the 2,000
Polish soldiers who
joined the mission.
Lukashenko
insisted yesterday that
Belarus was seeking
to keep Russia from
being sucked into the
“whirlpool” on the
EU’s border. “If we
make some
mistake it will
draw in Russia
— the largest
nuclear
power,” he
said. “I’m
not crazy. I
understand
very well
what this
could lead to.”President
Lukashenko is
no Putin puppetaintain
and keep
ians out.
horitiesfear that BelatthattheP
llllated bilatera
bbby deploying thou
diersto the borderutin, 69,
g
the
sbeing suck
“whirlpool
EU’s bor
make
mist
dra
—
nu
p
sa
n
un
ve
wh
cou