Border Guard to decide on ‘Night Wolves’ biker transit
PR dla Zagranicy
John Beauchamp
14.04.2015 09:12
Deputy Foreign Minister Rafał Trzaskowski has said that it will be up to the Polish Border Guard to decide whether to let the Russian ‘Night Wolves’ bikers travel through Poland on their way to Berlin.
Russian President Vladimir Putin meets the Night Wolves in Sevastopol in 2012. Photo: cc/kremlin.ru
The biker group, which has close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin, is planning to rally across 5,000 kilometres to Berlin to mark the end of World War II.
The rally’s route has raised eyebrows, as it takes the bikers past Wrocław, south-west Poland, and into the Czech Republic. A recent poll also showed that just over half of Poles do not want the bikers to pass through the country.
Speaking to broadcaster TVN24, Trzaskowski said that while the Border Guard will decide on whether to let the bikers into Poland, “the organisers of the Russian rally have not applied for Polish visas, but they could have applied for visas for other countries in the Schengen group”.
If the bikers have German-issued Schengen visas, for example, then the bikers should be allowed to pass through Poland, although Trzaskowski said that it will be up to the Border Guard and Police to check whether the bikers are not breaking any laws.
The ‘Night Wolves’ club is the oldest in Russia, being founded during the Perestroika period in 1989 before the collapse of the USSR.
The leader of the 5000-strong biker group, Alexander “The Surgeon” Zaldostanov, is considered to be a personal friend of Vladimir Putin. (jb)