The fence is five and a half metres high and bristles with jagged rolls of razor wire. Armed soldiers stand guard, surveying the snowy forest, still and silent on a frigid winter’s day. Cameras atop the fence are scanning the ground, sending footage back to the nearby HQ, which is on alert 24 hours a day.
The fence was not built to keep out an invading army, but people desperate to get to Europe. Once a checkpoint for cars and lorries, Poland’s border with Belarus is now a militarised zone: a steel and wire demonstration of the EU’s increasingly hardline stance towards undocumented people.
