No man’s land: inside the 19 November Guardian Weekly

Belarus's engineered migrant crisis.
Plus: the highs and lows of Cop26.
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As temperatures plummet on the European Union's eastern frontier, thousands of Middle Eastern migrants remain stranded in the no man's land between Poland and Belarus. It's now clear they were assisted in their arrival by Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus's despotic leader, for use as human pawns in a cruel political game. Yet, instead of forcing the EU to drop sanctions against his regime as he had evidently hoped, Lukashenko has merely triggered a further round of tougher measures to come.

Andrew Roth, Lorenzo Tondo and Martin Chulov survey the backdrop to this complex situation and the dire conditions at the border, while Kenan Malik outlines the hypocrisy at the heart of Fortress Europe's migration strategy that has served to encourage Lukashenko.