The incident happened on the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, 6 May.
Officers monitoring surveillance systems noticed that numerous migrants emerged from a tunnel on the Lithuanian side of the border. The tunnel had been dug under the border fence covered with razor wires, which Lithuania had installed to safeguard itself against illegal migration from Belarus.
Border guards the closest to the site responded to the border violation, including officers with dogs.
They caught 18 migrants that had exited the tunnel and fled to a forest.
All of them were young men. All but one claimed to be from Afghanistan. Only three of them had Afghan passports, whereas the rest were undocumented.
One of the migrants claimed to be from Sri Lanka but did not have identification documents.
As always, the state of migrants was assessed individually. It was determined that they were not in any danger. Having examined all the circumstances, it was decided not to allow the migrants to enter Lithuania and to return them to Belarus.
Moreover, in the border area close to the location where the migrants were detected, officers stopped an Audi A6 with Lithuanian number plates.
The driver of the vehicle was a 41-year-old man, a citizen of Ukraine. The passenger was a 33-year-old woman, a citizen of Ukraine.
Initial information suggests that the Ukrainian citizens who are residing in Lithuania lawfully arrived to pick up 7 of the migrants. The Ukrainians were detained.
A pre-trial investigation was opened into the smuggling of people through the state border. The crime is punishable by a fine or the maximum imprisonment sentence of up to 8 years.
This is the second case in 2026 that migrants tried to tunnel from Belarus to Lithuania. Previously, a tunnel was found in Vilnius district on 6 April.
According to the VSAT, the tunnels are dug with the knowledge of Belarusian officers.
The agency stated that most recently irregular migrants attempting to enter Lithuania from Belarus are typically men aged 20 to 40, who are physically fit and often brazen, and seek to avoid contact with officers.
So far this year, by 8 May, border guards stopped 731 migrants from accessing Lithuania from Belarus, whereas 146 migrants were stopped at the Polish border and as many as 2,475 were stopped in Latvia.