The Silence at the Border

• Poland's Border Closure: Poland closed its border with Belarus in September 2025 due to security concerns from Russian-Belarusian military exercises and drone incursions.
• Impact on China-EU Trade: This closure significantly disrupts the main rail corridor for China-EU freight, impacting about 90% of railway trade and the China-Europe Railway Express.
• Trade Rerouting and Costs: Goods are being rerouted to more expensive air cargo or slower sea routes, as no efficient alternative exists.
• Economic Consequences for China: China's "Belt and Road" initiative faces reputational risks, prompting a search for alternative trade corridors.
• Economic Consequences for Europe: European supply chains, especially for e-commerce and manufacturing, are vulnerable to delays and increased costs.
• Geopolitical Linkages: The border closure is directly tied to Russian military actions and drone provocations, with Poland prioritizing security.
  
  Continuing "grey-zone aggression" from Russia (provocations, cyber attacks) is highly likely, while a wider military conflict is possible but not expected immediately.

On a crisp September morning in 2025, the rail yards at Małaszewicze on Poland’s eastern frontier stood still. Freight trains once bound for Europe idled in silence, containers stacked without purpose. For years, this border crossing with Belarus had been an extremely busy inland terminal, the artery through which nearly ninety percent of China–EU rail freight passed. But after nineteen Russian drones breached Polish airspace during the Zapad-2025 military exercises, Warsaw made its choice. The border would remain closed “until further notice”.

It was a decision that reverberated across Eurasia. The closure halted a trade flow worth more than twenty-five billion euros annually. In Warsaw, officials framed it as a security imperative. In Beijing, state media insisted it was an economic inconvenience. And in Moscow, it was another move in a long game of hybrid destabilization.

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​Fortress or Gateway

“Poland has shifted from being Europe’s gateway to becoming its fortress,” observed Pekka Virkki, Guildmaster of Mission Grey Guild, when the experts convened to discuss the crisis. A Finnish historian and analyst, Virkki is the author of Jälkisuomettumisen ruumiinavaus (2023), forthcoming in English as Autopsy of Post-Finlandization: The Roots of the European Appeasement of Russia. In his view, the closure represents not just a border policy but a deeper realignment of Europe’s eastern flank.

Virkki reminded the Guild that these tactics were not new. “Back in the winter of 2021–2022, when Belarus pushed migrants toward the Polish and Lithuanian borders, it was not a humanitarian accident,” he argued. “It was part of Russia’s preparation for the invasion of Ukraine—designed to overwhelm reception centers, stoke xenophobia, and ensure that when real refugees came from Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania would be politically unable to welcome them. Earlier, Russia used the same playbook against Finland.”


Moscow’s Pattern of Provocations

That playbook has only grown more dangerous. This week, NATO radars tracked Russian MiG fighter jets skirting and briefly crossing into Estonian airspace—a calculated gesture, according to the Guildmaster, meant to probe both NATO’s rules of engagement and Europe’s political will. “The drone incursions over Poland and the fighter provocations near Estonia are not separate events,” Virkki warned. “They are chapters in the same story of Russia testing NATO’s eastern flank.”

For Poland, then, the decision to shut its border was not an economic miscalculation but a sovereign necessity.

Trains That Do Not Run

The disruption hit e-commerce firms such as Temu and Shein hardest, as well as European importers of pharmaceuticals and electronics. Air freight offered speed but at a thirty percent cost premium; sea freight, reliability but weeks of delay. Attempts to divert trains through the Baltics or via the Caspian “Middle Corridor” introduced inefficiencies and new geopolitical risks.

The Polish border closure also creates a tangible bargaining chip that European capitals and Washington could use to press Beijing for concrete diplomatic action on Ukraine.

At a minimum, EU leaders could condition expedited reopening and smoother rail flows on visible Chinese steps to restrain Russian escalation—public diplomatic pressure on Moscow, halting purchases that directly sustain the Russian war effort, or using Chinese influence in Minsk to reduce Belarus’s role as a staging ground for provocations. Those are modest asks relative to the economic prize at stake, but they would force Beijing to reconcile its commercial priorities with the geopolitical realities unfolding on NATO’s eastern flank.

Dorota Maczuga.

Beijing’s Economic Lens

At this point, Dorota Maczuga, a Poland-based East Asia specialist and co-founder of Polylocal, offered her assessment. Maczuga, who wrote her master’s thesis at National Taiwan University on Taiwan’s semiconductor industry and global political economy, has long tracked Beijing’s approach to Eurasian connectivity.

“In Beijing’s narrative, this is not a security crisis at all,” she told the Guild. “It is simply an unfortunate economic disruption. Chinese officials avoid mentioning Russian provocations and instead stress the mutual benefits of keeping the trains moving.”

Her point was borne out by coverage in Chinese state and commercial media. Following Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit to Warsaw, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement highlighting “mutually beneficial cooperation” and the importance of maintaining the China–Europe Railway Express, with no reference to Russian drones. Outlets such as Baidu and Sohu focused on the risks to European supply chains and the Belt and Road Initiative, while Weibo commentary warned that rerouting cargo would bring “mutual damage” to both China and Europe. Even Singapore’s Zaobao described the war only as a “Ukraine crisis.”

As Maczuga put it, “For Poland, this is about drones and sovereignty. Beijing would like to ignore these considerations and seems to act as it was only a logistical disruption.”

Beyond immediate, transactional demands, the border closure might give Europe leverage to raise the reputational cost to Beijing of treating BRI corridors as immune from geopolitics. The disruption damages the narrative of the Belt and Road as a dependable route for fast Eurasian trade, a vulnerability Chinese planners worry about; exposing that vulnerability in multilateral forums and linking infrastructure facilitation to de-escalatory actions by Russia and Belarus would exacerbate those reputational pressures.

Pekka Virkki

A Fractured Illusion

Both Virkki and Maczuga agree on one thing: the closure has shattered the illusion of permanence that once surrounded the Belt and Road’s European artery. The trains may roll again, but the sense of reliability is gone.

What began with drones over Poland and MiGs over Estonia may not lead to open conflict tomorrow. But the silence at the border is itself a warning: in today’s Europe, geopolitics sets the timetable, not economics.

Dorota Maczuga's analysis on the Chinese media coverage

By Dorota Maczuga, Polylocal

​The Chinese side does not officially address Poland’s security concerns, instead framing the issue primarily as an economic one in which both the EU and China lose due to trade disruptions. Beijing clearly avoids using the China–Europe Railway Express as leverage to pressure Russia.

China’s response has gone beyond diplomatic statements. Foreign Minister Wang Yi met his Polish counterpart Radosław Sikorski in Warsaw, where he shifted the focus from Russian provocations to the shared interests of both sides, stressing that the Railway Express is a mutually beneficial project. Following the meeting, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a joint statement highlighting Poland’s role in developing an efficient Eurasian transport corridor. Both sides pledged to ensure the smooth operation of the China–Europe Railway Express and to strengthen cargo links.

Most Chinese reporting on the border closure is short and factual. It notices Poland’s security concerns but puts a larger emphasis on economic consequences of the border closure. Some outlets underline its detrimental impact not only on the Belt and Road Initiative but also on Poland’s economy, describing Poland as one of the main beneficiaries of the Railway Express. These reports suggest that searching for alternative routes would bring “mutual damage”, since the border closure is harmful to the European economy.

Coverage of Wang Yi’s visit to Poland typically offers a general overview of his meetings with Sikorski and Polish President Karol Nawrocki, while avoiding mention of drone provocations (4, 5). The situation in Ukraine is mentioned briefly as a “Ukraine crisis”. [1], [2]

A more analytical approach appears in Russian-sponsored Chinese-language media such as Sputnik, which argues that while large-scale trade disruptions from the border closure are unlikely, the situation undermines China’s strategy of diversifying trade routes.