By Halyna Hergert | 2026-03-26

A tunnel starts 50 meters (164 feet) inside Belarus and surfaces 10 meters (33 feet) past the barrier on Polish territory. Someone built four of them. And they didn't use shovels.

Poland's border guards said at least 180 people may have crossed into the European Union (EU) before the first was found in December 2025. More than 130 migrants were detained afterward.

"Officers of the Podlaskie Border Guard Unit have uncovered a total of four tunnels under the border with Belarus, all in 2025," Lt. Col. Katarzyna Zdanowicz of the Polish border service told the Telegraph on February 25.

Engineering points east

The tunnels are not the primitive passageways ordinary smugglers dig -- walls of damp earth reinforced with wooden posts and metal rods, built to last. Uladzimir Zhyhar, a spokesperson for BelPol, an organization of former Belarusian security officials, told Kontur that reports of underground migration routes first surfaced about a year and a half ago.

"Constructing tunnels like this, especially so that they won't be destroyed or come crashing down, is a rather long process," Zhyhar said. He added that the structures resemble those used in Gaza and suggested Middle Eastern specialists may have helped build them.

"Based on information we have, the [Alyaksandr] Lukashenka and [Vladimir] Putin regimes solicited help from Palestinian specialists," he said. "Of course, there's no documentary proof of this, but based on the logic of the circumstances, we can see that this reflects reality."

The Telegraph cited similar assessments from Western defense experts. Maj. Rob Campbell, a former British army sapper, said that if he had to speculate, the relevant expertise would come from Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Former Israeli intelligence Col. Sarit Zehavi broadened the list of suspects to include Hezbollah, Iranian proxies, Kurdish militias and ISIL.

Viktor Yahun, a reserve major general in Ukraine's Security Service, told Kontur that the answer may lie even farther away.

"North Korean engineering units are now in Kursk Region, which isn't very far from the border with Belarus," he said. "It's not out of the realm of possibility that they were also involved in designing and constructing these tunnels."

Monitored zone, state hand

The tunnels could not exist without state involvement, Zhyhar said. The area within 10 to 15 kilometers (6 to 9 miles) of the border is closely monitored, making it impossible to bring in construction materials, metal beams and structural frameworks, without official cover.

Yahun framed the issue in national security terms. Belarus is now under Russia's total military and political control, he said, which means any infrastructure anomalies near the border must be read as potential hybrid operations -- whether migrant surges or sabotage. He noted historical precedent: underground routes were used during the 1992–1995 siege of Sarajevo, most famously the "Tunnel of Hope," which kept the besieged city supplied.

A new border problem

Europe's existing border defenses were not built to counter this threat.

"The security methods the European Union used before to defend the border were effective against ordinary migration attacks," Zhyhar said. "But when we're talking about underground tunnels, that creates big problems."

He called for increased engineering inspections, new detection methods and additional resources for European security services.

Zhyhar pushed back on any assumption that a recent drop in visible crossings signals reduced pressure.

"Just because no one has documented a large number of migrants in the last few months doesn't mean that Lukashenka and Putin aren't pressuring Europe," he said. "They're using this as one among other mechanisms of a hybrid war against the EU."

His prescription: tighter sanctions.

"We need to put up every possible barrier and curtail the regime's financial capabilities," Zhyhar said. "The less money a regime has, the weaker control will be in the country and the faster a regime like Lukashenka's will fall."