The ‘green border’ between Poland and Belarus

Journalists Wisse Beets and Noortje Smeltink are producing a podcast documentary series for VPRO Bureau Buitenland and OVT about Schengen’s borders. For this series, they travelled through Poland in June 2026. This photo series was shot by Noortje Smeltink and follows humanitarian worker Aleksandra Chrzanowska.

Aleksandra Chrzanowska walks through the Białowieża Forest, one of the last remaining primeval forests in Europe. She moves confidently through roots, branches and leaves, wearing white rubber gloves, boots and long trousers. She knows her way around here. For years, ever since she moved to the Białowieża region near the Belarusian border, she has entered the forest almost daily. She is looking for people on the move – or for the traces they may have left behind: clothes, food wrappers, wet socks, empty bottles, a sleeping bag.

Chrzanowska works with Grupa Granica, a Polish network of activists and humanitarian organisations that has been active along the ‘green border’ – the forested natural zone separating Poland and Belarus –  since the crisis began in 2021. That year, the EU accused Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko of luring people from countries such as Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen and several African states to Minsk, and pushing them towards the borders of Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. Poland described it as a “hybrid attack”. For the people themselves, it meant being trapped between border regimes, forests, rivers, freezing temperatures and repeated pushbacks.

Grupa Granica set up an emergency helpline. When people hiding in the forest managed to call, activists would try to reach them with water, food, dry clothes, power banks, basic medical aid and sometimes legal information. Many had crossed rivers or marshland. Their clothes were often soaked. Some had been walking for days.

Today, far fewer people call the helpline. Poland has built a multi-layered, 186-kilometre steel fence along much of its border with Belarus, making crossings nearly impossible. Tensions between Belarus and Poland have eased, and part of the route has shifted slightly north, towards Latvia, from where people often move on to Lithuania, Poland and further into the EU. But people are still crossing here, Chrzanowska says. Otherwise, the border police would not still be so visibly present along the green zone. And indeed, on the way here we pass at least eight police, army and border patrol vehicles. Last week, the phone rang twice. The plastic food packages with Russian writing on them make her suspect, however, that many more people cross without calling.

On the way back, two soldiers in an army truck order us to stop. They want to know where we are going, but Chrzanowska refuses to answer. “I’m not telling you anything unless you tell me your name,” she says, calmly but visibly annoyed. The soldiers roll up the window and drive away. “They always run when I ask their names,” Chrzanowska says.

The podcast documentary series will premiere in November and will be available on NPO Luister, VPRO and other podcast platforms.