NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte announced this Friday the launch of a new initiative, called Eastern Sentinel, to strengthen the defense of its eastern flank, after Wednesday's incursion of Russian drones into Polish airspace"Eastern Sentinel will add flexibility and strength to our posture and make it clear that, as a defensive alliance, we are always ready to defend ourselves," Rutte said at a press conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels, accompanied by Supreme Allied Commander Europe Alexus Grynwi.

A huge statue of Lenin reigns supreme in Minsk's Independence Square, guarding the entrance to Government House, a Soviet-era building with hundreds of rectangular windows from which the Republic of Belarus is controlled. Two or three people walk in front of it, some Russian tourists take a few photos, but apart from the soldiers guarding the building, there is not much movement in the square.

Lithuania is taking steps to strengthen the Suwalki Corridor to deter Russia from launching a potential attack against the European Union or NATO in this territory, considered by many military experts to be the Achilles' heel of the Atlantic Alliance. This corridor, about 100 kilometers wide and bordering Poland and Lithuania, is located between the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad and Belarus, Russia's main ally.

The European Union has been backtracking on its defence of human rights for some time now, especially when it comes to immigration and, even more so, when it comes to confronting the xenophobic policies of Eastern European countries such as Bulgaria and Poland. While last week it announced that he would allocate some €3.5m to pay for the repatriation of immigrants stranded in Belarus after Aleksandr Lukashenko's tour de force, on Wednesday it opened the door for Poland, Latvia and Lithuania – the countries that have come under greatest migratory pressure at their borders because of this policy – to cut back on the right to asylum and to bypass international standards on refugee protection. The situation is very delicate because, although it is clear that this is a complex problem in which the Belarusian government has used the desperation of migrants to put pressure on the EU and avoid sanctions, the result is that, in the public eye, it seems that the dictator has got away with it.

In Brussels the tone against Aleksandr Lukashenko's regime in Belarus is getting louder and louder. For months now Poland, Latvia and Lithuania have been warning that thousands of people are being pushed across their borders by the Belarusian regime. However, the situation has worsened in recent days, and the European Union is even clearer that Lukashenko is looking for blackmail after several rounds of sanctions against him and his entourage for having violated democratic principles and human rights in his country. After having accused him of "cynicism" and of "instrumentalising" migrants, on Tuesday the Union has directly described him as a "gangster" because he plays "with people's lives for political purposes".

Belarusian journalist Roman Protasevich, who was arrested after the plane in which he was flying was forced to make an emergency landing in Minsk, has appeared by surprise on Monday at a press conference called by the government of Aleksandr Lukashenko to give explanations about the incident. Protasevich, who has been imprisoned for three weeks, appeared alongside four government representatives (two of whom were in uniform) and said he is ready to take responsibility for the crimes he says he committed.

This evening's meeting in Brussels is the first face-to-face meeting of European Union heads of state and government since December, and at the last minute Belarus has been squeezed into an agenda that was already fraught with foreign policy conflicts. Yesterday Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko forced the diversion of a Ryanair commercial airliner flying from Athens to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, to arrest journalist Roman Protasevich. Reactions in the European Union were swift and forceful. The High Representative of the European Union, Josep Borrell, quickly warned that the EU would consider "all the consequences", which could range from extending the list of sanctions already in place against Belarus to banning the Belarusian state airline from using European airports, as proposed by the Belgian Prime Minister, Alexander De Croo. It remains to be seen, however, whether there is unanimity to go this far.