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Bialarouc's authoritarian president, Alexander Lukashenko, is a man who likes to spring surprises.

Earlier this year, he plucked an opposition blogger out of the sky when he hijacked a plane,

and then he invented a new type of hybrid warfare using migrants.

The result has caused untold misery and confusion.

And as you're here in this week's assignment, it's also dividing Poland.

Welcome to the BBC World Service, I'm Lucy Ash in Eastern Poland.

The forest is really beautiful. They call this area the green lungs of Poland.

With the birds and the blue sky this morning, it looks very idyllic, but in a different context,

this place can turn deadly.

Suddenly, I could see a man standing like a ghost, like a shadow.

Only his face seemed visible in the dark.

And when we met, we said, hello, we came to help you.

And suddenly, more people appeared.

And the first thing they said, they said, please, no police, no police.

So we promised that we would not call anybody because we are friends who came to help.

By day, Kasia Wapar is a schoolteacher from the small town of Hainovka.

By night, she joins an underground network of volunteers, armed with hot soup and warm clothes.

They look for migrants in hiding. Men, women and children caught in a grim cat and mouse game

in the freezing forest. Kasia says the drama unfolding along the nearby border with Belarus

has transformed the lives of local residents.

We used to ride our bikes there and walk a lot in the forest.

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