Latvia has asked Lithuania to send 10–15 border guards to help it handle irregular migration on its border with Belarus.
“Latvia has asked for 10–15 officers. And this is the number we are considering. At the moment we are looking into who could go,” Lina Laurinaitytė of the Lithuanian State Border Guard Service (VSAT) told the Baltic News Service (BNS), adding that mostly Lithuanian border guards serving on the Russian border would be sent to Latvia.
“Another important point is that most of the officers will come from the Lithuanian-Russian border where the situation may not be so intense at the moment, and the officers themselves will benefit from gaining new experience in Latvia as it is currently still facing the problem of illegal migration,” the VSAT spokeswoman said.
The plan is to send cynologists and criminal intelligence officers, she added.
Earlier, VSAT Commander Rustamas Liubajevas told LRT RADIO that Lithuania and Estonia would send officers to assist their Latvian counterparts from August 5.
Poland is now the country facing the highest inflow of migrants, followed by Latvia, he said.
According to VSAT, Lithuanian border guards turned away around 350 migrants between January 1 and July 26. Meanwhile, Latvia recorded over 3,000 attempts to cross the border, and Poland recorded 21,000 such cases.
The VSAT chief also said that Lithuania is facing the problem of so-called secondary migration where foreigners enter Lithuania via Latvia.
Lithuania also sent 20 border guards to assist Latvia in the autumn of 2023.
Lithuania will start building permanent border fortification at two locations in September and the first counter-mobility park will be opened at the end of August, Defence Minister Laurynas Kasčiūnas has said.
“On August 22, we will invite you all to the opening of one of the counter-mobility parks, the engineering park in Pabradė, and there will be a total of 27 such parks, and they will start to be established on a weekly basis,” Kasčiūnas told a press conference at the government headquarters on Monday.
“By the end of the year, we have to fill all 27 counter-mobility parks with all the main four types of equipment – dragon’s teeth, the well-known blocking tool, prefabricated ‘hedgehogs’, Spanish riders, and roadblocks,” he said.
The counter-mobility parks will be located near the border, Kasčiūnas noted.
“When the intelligence services light up an indicator, it will be possible to move all this to the arteries [main roads],” the minister said.
According to him, permanent fortifications will be set up in two locations.
“We won’t be very specific about what these places are, some are near Kaliningrad, some are near Belarus. At the beginning of September, we will start permanent fortification processes in two places,” Kasčiūnas said.
“This will include the installation of fortifications on the banks to prevent the enemy from crossing the shoals and the fortification of some bridges,” he added.
The Defence Ministry launched a tender for the counter-mobility equipment in May and contracts were awarded in June.
“The production is already in place, we have pictures of all that equipment, now the question is how to get it to these counter-mobility parks more quickly,” the minister said.
According to Kasčiūnas, the national defence system sees a need for 600 million euros for the acquisition of counter-mobility equipment over a decade. Most of it will be spent on mines
The leaders of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland have signed a letter calling on the EU to build a defence line along the bloc’s eastern border with Russia and Belarus to protect against military and hybrid threats from these countries.
Photo: Lithuanian State Border Guard Service (VSAT)
Via LRT
