May 26, Pozirk. Lithuania demands more than €200 million from Belarus in damages, accusing it of engineering a migration crisis at the shared border, BNS reported, citing Lithuania’s justice ministry.
The amount is an initial estimate and may be revised upwards, it noted.
Earlier this month, Vilnius filed a lawsuit with the UN International Court of Justice (ICJ).
Lithuania argues that between 2021 and 2023 the migration crisis at its shared border with Belarus forced it to invest in a border fence, border surveillance systems and deploy a larger number of personnel.
The lawsuit may also be relevant to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), the ministry said, noting that the ECHR is currently considering seven cases against Lithuania regarding migrant rights.
Belarus’ western neighbors have been affected by the migration crisis since 2021, when the flow of people desperate to get to the European Union surged. At that time, Alaksandar Łukašenka, angered by EU sanctions, had indicated that Minsk would not prevent asylum seekers from Africa and Asia from using Belarus as a route to the EU.
Latvia, Lithuania and Poland describe the crisis as a “hybrid attack” orchestrated by Minsk and Moscow.
