Two flights explain EU asylum policy

IRAQI AIRWAYSIAEU flight 271 from Baghdad to Minsk was a surprisingly popular service. The four-hour trip from Iraq, an unstable country in the Middle East, to Belarus, a dictatorship on the edge of Europe, became busy this summer. At the start of the year the flight ran once a week; in July it was going four times as often.Lucky passengers were decanted at Minsk airport and whisked to Belarus’s border with Lithuania, in the hope of a new life in the . In 2020 just 74 people crossed from Belarus to Lithuania illegally. This year more than 4,000 people have tried. All this was overseen by Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian president, whose government had encouraged the arrivals. “We will not hold anyone back,” said Mr Lukashenko. “They are headed to enlightened, warm, cosy Europe.”