Lithuania extends emergency at borders with Belarus, Russia

September 14, BPN. Lithuanian MPs voted on September 13 to extend the state of emergency at the country’s borders with Belarus and Russia by three months, until December 16 inclusive.

On September 19, Lithuania imposes an entry ban on Russian nationals and extends the state of emergency to border control points at the Vilnius and Kaunas airports as well as to the Vilnius railway station, the Lithuanian parliament said.

Earlier, Lithuanian Interior Minister Agnė Bilotaitė noted the need for security measures to counter potential threats arising from Russian and Belarusian hybrid attacks.

She noted that Alaksandr Łukašenka’s regime has recently “become more and more active in using migrants as a form of hybrid aggression against Lithuania,” while Belarusian border guards assisted illegal migrants and damaged the border fence.

Recently, Lithuania has been recording an increasing number of attempts to illegally cross the EU border with Belarus. The latest border fence damage incident was reported on September 13.

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.

Lithuania has built the fence as a response to the 2021 migration crisis, when nearly 4,200 people entered the country illegally from Belarus. In August 2021, Lithuanian border guards started turning migrants back to Belarus. Since then, border guards thwarted 14,638 attempts to enter Lithuania illegally.

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