Lithuania video surveillance covers 53.3 percent of Belarus border

August 20, BPN. Video surveillance covers 362 of 678.82 km (53.3 percent) of the border with Belarus, Lithuanian Interior Minister Agnė Bilotaitė said on August 19, following a visit to the Pūškos border post in the Ignalina district.

According to her, the European Commission has allocated to Lithuania a total of €70 million in order to effectively protect the EU’s external border and properly control illegal migration.

“The EU’s powerful support for Lithuania will help strengthen the protection of the country’s border with Belarus,” Bilotaitė said, as quoted by the interior ministry’s press office. “In the face of geopolitical threats, it is very important to install monitoring systems along the entire section of the border with Belarus by the end of this year.”

The ministry noted that the construction of a barrier on the border with Belarus should be completed in early September.

The migration crisis at the Belarusian-EU border dates back to the spring of 2021. It escalated on November 8, 2021, when thousands of migrants set up a camp near the Polish border. The Baltic states and Poland accused Belarusian authorities of creating the trouble at the border, while the latter blamed it on the West.

Migration figures had dropped significantly by the time Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, but have risen more recently.