BELARUSIAN President Alexander Lukashenko has warned of increased militarisation on the country’s borders and is blaming foreign forces for creating a humanitarian crisis.

After meeting top officials from Belarus’s security, defence and law enforcement agencies on Monday, he accused Ukraine of establishing military camps harbouring opposition figures who are being prepared to return to Belarus to overthrow the government.

And Mr Lukashenko said that most of the troops gathered on the country’s border, particularly those in Poland, were from the United States.

He also took aim at neighbouring Lithuania, which he said “gets into every crevice to show its loyalty to Nato and the United States.”

The Belarusian leader said there was a migrant crisis unfolding on the country’s borders that he blamed entirely on Western countries. 

He accused neighbouring states of declaring states of emergency, which “allow no-one to enter so that no-one knows that people are dying.”

Mr Lukashenko blamed countries including Lithuania for the ill-treatment of migrants when they arrive in their territory.

He has been accused of sparking a migration crisis by allowing people to fly from the Middle East and sending them across the borders of neighbouring European Union members.

But he denied that Belarus was responsible for increased migrant flows, saying this was the work of “European criminal gangs.” 

It was Western countries that were responsible for the crisis, according to Mr Lukashenko, and they had a responsibility to solve it.

“Let’s discuss what to do next,” he said. “It’s not acceptable to let people suffer. We provided them with clothes, food and firewood, as well as with tents. 

“However, they will freeze to death in the winter. These people came thousands of kilometres from the south. In short, there is a humanitarian disaster on the border.”

Belarus has warned about US-led military expansion in eastern Europe, including 28,000 troops deployed as part of Nato military exercises stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea.

These operations have doubled in the past five years, he said, with military aggression intensifying since Mr Lukashenko won last year’s disputed election with some 80 per cent of the vote.

Western powers say the vote was fraudulent and have pumped millions into opposition news organisations, trade unions and media outlets as part of efforts to dislodge him.

Earlier this year a resolution passed by the European parliament expressed regret that the Belarusian authorities had failed to follow World Bank and IMF recommendations to privatise the state sector, implement austerity and “encourage entrepreneurship.”

The EU has imposed a raft of sanctions targeting leading Belarusian officials and has swung its support behind opposition figure Svetlana Tikhanovskaya.