Belarus Border Tunnels Are Not Like Gaza – But Tactics Adapt

Tunnels discovered by Poland are a new dimension of security challenge on the Belarus border. Another is the information space that overblows the issue by linking it to Iran-sponsored tactics.

Poland has spent years and billions of zlotys trying to seal its eastern frontier with Belarus. Now it even plans to mine the border after withdrawing from the Ottawa Convention. Yet Belarus adapted, deploying tunnels beneath the dense Polish–Belarusian forest that look like Hamas’s handiwork — and require none of it. Because of Minsk’s ability to do this on its own, we are in a dramatically different situation, says Kacper Rękawek. Are we?

On 20 February 2026 Poland formally withdrew from the 1997 Ottawa Convention banning the production, stockpiling and use of anti-personnel landmines. It was the last of the five NATO states bordering the Union State of Belarus and Russia to take this step. Parts of the Białowieża Forest, long a focal point of the migration crisis orchestrated by Aliaksandr Lukashenka, have now revealed a different kind of risk – underground border tunnels. The Telegraph reported that they share features with those used by militants in the Middle East.