President Alexander Lukashenko said on Monday Belarus seeks no confrontation with Poland but wants the European Union to take in 2,000 of the migrants stranded on its border, and he added that if the crisis deteriorated “too far, war is unavoidable”, writes Reuters.

Lukashenko, as quoted by the state-owned Belta news agency, said he did not want things to escalate.

“We need to get through to the Poles, to every Pole, and show them that we"re not barbarians, that we don"t want confrontation. We don"t need it. Because we understand that if we go too far, war is unavoidable.

And that will be a catastrophe. We understand this perfectly well. We don’t want any kind of flare-up”, - he said.