Russia Didn't Send Soldiers Across Poland's Border. It Sent Migrants Under It.

Poland's fortified its border with Belarus. Built fences. Deployed sensors. Added troops.

Then in December, border guards found 180 people who'd walked right through — underground.

Not over the fence. Under it.

Four Tunnels in One Year

Polish Border Guard discovered four tunnels throughout 2025, all along the Belarus frontier. The December tunnel near Narewka village was the biggest: 100 meters long, reinforced with concrete supports, professionally engineered.

Electronic monitoring caught the 180 migrants moving through. Guards detained 130 on the Polish side. The rest vanished before they could be caught.

Lt. Col. Katarzyna Zdanowicz confirmed all four were found in Podlaskie Voivodeship, the region where Poland's border meets Belarus.

This isn't people digging with shovels. Fortification experts who analyzed footage said the construction shows "a high level of expertise."

The Hamas Connection

Major Rob Campbell, a former British Army engineer and fortifications specialist, reviewed the tunnel footage. His assessment: possible involvement of "specialists from Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad."

Col. Sarit Zehavi, retired Israeli intelligence officer, agreed. "If you want deep tunnelling expertise, the answer's going to be with Middle Easterners," she told The Telegraph. "We have ample evidence of Hamas doing the same thing in Gaza."

Polish officials believe Belarus hired specialists from the Middle East to design or supervise construction.

Hamas builds tunnels under Gaza with concrete reinforcement, ventilation systems, and structural supports. The Poland tunnels have the same engineering fingerprints.

What Hybrid Warfare Actually Looks Like

Russia and Belarus have weaponized migration against the EU since 2021. They recruit desperate people from the Middle East and Africa, promise easy entry to Europe, then funnel them toward Poland, Lithuania, and Finland.

It's a deliberate strategy to overwhelm border systems, create humanitarian crises, and force political concessions.

Now they've gone underground.

You can't fence a tunnel. You can't surveil what you can't see. Poland's poured millions into securing its most fortified border, and the border just moved — 100 meters below the surface.

The EU Parliament confirmed in 2025 that "foreign state actors, among them the Russian Federation and Belarus, have deliberately weaponized illegal migration as part of their hybrid warfare strategy."

This is what modern conflict looks like when you can't send tanks. You weaponize people. You dig under defenses built to stop soldiers.

Where It Goes From Here

Poland's fast-tracking €18 million for radar, drones, and AI sensor networks capable of detecting underground activity.

But detection's just the first problem. What do you do once you find a tunnel? Seal it? They dig another. Patrol underground? Belarus controls the other side.

The 2021 border crisis turned violent when Poland used water cannons to push back migrants throwing stones. This time, the migrants are already through before anyone knows they're there.

Russia's hybrid warfare toolkit keeps evolving. First it was disinformation. Then weaponized migration. Now tunnels built with expertise from conflict zones 2,000 miles away.

The EU's eastern border just became a lot harder to defend — because the threat isn't coming from above anymore.