BIALOWIEZA – On a bracing morning in Bialowieza, Europe’s most ancient forest , on the border between Poland and Belarus, a bulky green truck speeds along a dirt track lined with centuries-old oak and pine trees.

Inside are Polish construction workers headed towards the border a few hundred metres away, on a mission to build a new road to help the authorities deal with a deadly migration crisis.

Bialowieza, a biodiverse expanse the size of Greater London and home to rich wildlife including bison, wolves and lynx, has mostly been untouched for millennia. But the Unesco-protected forest is at the heart of a geopolitical war. New Feature

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Since 2021, tens of thousands of migrants have tried to enter the European Union, and often the

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