Backfire

NEED TO KNOW

Backfire

BELARUS

Children are sleeping in the woods on the border between Belarus and Poland. Many haven’t eaten in days. Instances of hypothermia are increasing, prompting the United Nations and humanitarian organizations to scale up aid amid a rising death count.

The children, their parents and others had come from their homes in the Middle East after hearing that they could easily enter the European Union through the former Soviet republic of Belarus, the last dictatorship in Europe. Some paid smugglers more than $3,000 to bring them from Turkey to the Polish border where they then hoped to continue to Germany where they planned to seek asylum, Reuters wrote.

Instead, they fell into limbo, becoming pawns in a geopolitical battle between East and West, the Washington Post explained in a story that contained moving photos of migrants in the cold forests of Central...