\u201eWe take into account all the needs they have expressed, what they would like and how much we can help. However, my priority, as minister, is the security of our borders. It is not like our border guards are sitting at home doing nothing, just waiting for us to send them somewhere. We use the capabilities that we have for the protection of our borders. We are assessing possibilities where we could move them, use them to assist Latvia and we hope to find these possibilities,\u201c Katelynas told ELTA on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Lithuania has recently sent two rotations of border guards to help Latvia, which faces irregular migration from Belarus. A team of 9 officers from the State Border Guard Service (VSAT) was deployed to help the neighbouring country secure its border and was later replaced by another team of 9 officers.<\/p>\n
However, when Latvian Interior Minister Janis Dombrava visited Lithuania recently, he said that Latvia would expect Lithuania to send 100 officers.<\/p>\n
Katelynas reiterates that Lithuania will explore ways to help, but Latvia should take action as well, for instance, by invoking the assistance of its Armed Forces.<\/p>\n
When Latvian President Edgars Rink\u0113vi\u010ds paid a state visit to Lithuania last week, President Gitanas Naus\u0117da said that reintroducing border checkpoints beteween the countries of the Schengen Area would be treated as defeat in tackling irregular migration. Naus\u0117da says it is more important to strengthen the security of the EU\u2019s external borders.<\/p>\n
Latvia shares a 172 km border with Belarus, an ally of Russia, compared with Lithuania\u2019s 679 km long border.<\/p>\n
The Baltic States and Poland accuse Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko of deliberately directing irregular migrants to the borders of EU countries in order to exert pressure on the EU.<\/p>\n
As a result, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland have stepped up their border protection and built border fences.<\/p>\n
So far this year, Lithuania has stopped 957 foreigners from entering the country illegally. Since the start of the migrant crisis caused by Belarus in 2021, Lithuania has thwarted nearly 26 thousand illegal border crossing attempts.<\/p>\n
Latvian news agency LETA reports that Latvia stopped 67 illegal migrants from entering Latvia from Belarus on Tuesday, 21 July, and a total of 8,413 migrants so far in 2026.<\/p>\n
In 2025, Latvia prevented more than 12 thousand foreigners from illegally accessing the country from Belarus. The figure stood at 5,388 in 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201eWe take into account all the needs they have expressed, what they would like and how much we…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3907,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1757,88],"class_list":["post-3906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-border-control","tag-latvia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}