EU stops 58 illegal migrants at Belarus border

December 21, BPN. The EU has not allowed 58 migrants to enter illegally from Belarus over the past day.

The Lithuanian State Border Guard Service did not record illegal border crossings on December 20, but said that their Latvian colleagues thwarted 32 attempts. Since the beginning of the year, Lithuania has recorded 11,119 illegal attempts to cross the border.

The Polish Border Guard said that 26 foreigners tried to illegally cross the border from Belarus. Border guards arrested a Kazakhstan national for complicity in illegal migration, taking the total of arrests on these charges to 384 since the start of 2022. 

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, 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.