Lithuania starts construction of patrol road along shared border with Belarus

June 19, BPN. Lithuania has started construction of a border patrol road along its shared border with Belarus, BNS reported, citing Interior Minister Agnė Bilotaitė.

The three-and-a-half-meter-wide road will run next to the border fence and the control strip and will be used by border guards and special vehicles.

It will boost the protection of the state border and ensure faster response to border violations and fence breaches, the official said.

About 100 kilometers of the border road will be constructed at the first stage.

Lithuania tightened controls at its shared borders with Belarus and Russia as much as possible, its interior ministry said noting that Lithuania’s section of the EU external border is the most protected one. The border fence protects 530 km of Lithuania’s 679-km border with Belarus. A section of 360 km is equipped with barbed wire and border surveillance systems.

The fence construction was one of the measures to resolve the migration crisis at the Belarus-EU border which dates back to the spring of 2021. It escalated in November 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.

On June 15, Polish Border Guard reported the completion of a 206-kilometer electronic barrier at the border with Belarus equipped with 3,000 surveillance cameras and 400 km of detector cables.

Latvia is also building a physical barrier at its border with Belarus.