Mateusz Sitek

Mateusz Sitek was a private of the 1st Warsaw Tank Brigade.

Mateusz Sitek was stabbed, when he stopped the attempt of a group of migrants to break through from the Belarusian side. He was stabbed by one of the migrants. The young man was hospitalized, fell into a coma, and despite all the efforts of doctors, he died.

His farewell will be held on June 12, reported in the brigade. By decision of Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, Mateusz Sitek was posthumously promoted to the rank of senior sergeant and awarded the gold medal "For Services in the Defense of the Country."

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The border is patrolled by about 6,000 Polish army troops, some 2,200 border guards and a few hundred police. Recently, some other officers also required hospital treatment for knife and other wounds inflicted from behind the barrier.

Following the stabbing attack, the government vowed to further step up security at the border and areas of buffer zones, where only the guards can go, to facilitate their task.

Poland has been taking steps to warn and dissuade potential migrants from trying to go via Poland, through information and posters disseminated in North African, Middle East countries and Turkey. The efforts have been successful in reducing the flow, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Pawel Wronski.

But recently more migrants have been arriving from Central African countries like Somalia, Eritrea or Yemen, where Western countries have limited possibilities of reaching people with information about the non-passable border, Wronski said.

Government officials on Thursday demanded explanations after it emerged that three soldiers were handcuffed and detained by Polish military police in March for having fired warning shots when faced with an advancing group of migrants on the border with Belarus.

The soldiers had allegedly fired warning shots first into the air and then into the ground as they tried to stop an advancing migrant group on Polish territory. No one was injured.

Government officials say the detention was an excessive measure.

“This is a shocking case, considering the fact that our soldiers were recently repeatedly attacked by aggressors from the Belarus side,”

said President Andrzej Duda, who is the supreme commander of Poland's armed forces.

Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz said the military police overreacted and demanded clarification from them and from the prosecutors who are investigating. Prosecutors said Thursday footage from the shooting did not show the soldiers being in a life-threatening situation.

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Following the stabbing in May, Warsaw announced it would spend more than €2.3 billion ($2.5 billion) on strengthening its eastern border and would reintroduce a 200-meter (656-foot) buffer zone.

"It is the Russian state ... that is behind the organization of the recruitment, transport and attempts to smuggle thousands of people into Europe,"

Tusk said in the immediate aftermath of stabbing.

In 2022, Poland erected a 5.5-meter-high fence and an electronic surveillance system. But according to the Polish Border Guard, there have already been more than 17,000 attempted crossings in the first five months of 2024.

“The soldiers at the border are carrying out a mission for the Polish state,"

Kosiniak-Kamysz told a news conference Thursday.

“We are always on the side of the soldiers ... of those who carry out their tasks at the border,”

he said, adding that soldiers, in charge of protecting the border since 2022, have used weapons in emergency situations some 700 times.