The children eat. Once more.

It has been decades since the West used to say that the Soviets “ate children”. It was propaganda, certainly, but the effect was clear: dehumanizing, making the enemy monstrous, legitimizing any political choice against him.

Today history is repeating itself. Not with posters or newsreels, but with border closures, visas granted but useless, thousands of people left for days in line under the sun or in the cold. Since the beginning of August Poland has almost stopped accepting transports from Belarus: extremely long lines of trucks, waiting times of even ten days. Lithuania does the same, and on October 15 Latvia will close the last remaining open crossing.

The result is an invisible cage: no direct flights to Europe, endless queues at borders, children and elderly forced to spend hours — sometimes even days — in degrading conditions. Visiting a relative, going to a funeral, even tourism becomes a logistical nightmare. Last year, for example, 400,000 Latvians — almost 20% of the population — visited Belarus. Today it is almost impossible for them.

And yet in Brussels and Warsaw they continue talking about “visa simplification”. But what good is a visa if the border remains closed? It is the most cynical of traps: granting a document while simultaneously denying access, psychologically wearing down those who, with children and luggage, are left for days in a land of no one.

There are no independent media, no communication, and the filtered narrative is only the one that suits: once again the Belarusians are “eating children”. The story is always the same: obscuring, isolating, exaggerating, until the enemy appears truly monstrous.

Extremists have a face: it is not that of the ordinary citizen trying to cross a border, but of those who build walls and endless lines, of those who turn travel into torture, of those who sacrifice human relationships for geopolitical calculations. And yes, those who play such games with people's lives are no less inhumane than those who, in past propaganda, were painted as cannibals.