{"id":3932,"date":"2026-07-23T14:33:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T14:33:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/3932\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T14:33:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T14:33:18","slug":"putin-stepping-up-hybrid-war-on-latvia-because-hes-losing-in-ukraine-pm-kulbergs-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/3932\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin stepping up hybrid war on Latvia because he\u2019s \u2018losing in Ukraine\u2019, PM Kulbergs says"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Latvia&#8217;s Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs has told Euronews that Russia and Belarus are intensifying their hybrid war against the Baltic state as Russia&#8217;s President Vladimir Putin looks to divert attention from losses on the battlefield in Ukraine.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Latvia has recently become the<a data-ylk=\"slk:focal point;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;link&quot;,&quot;yLinkElementType&quot;:&quot;article_link&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.euronews.com\/my-europe\/2026\/07\/17\/latvia-becomes-lukashenkas-latest-pressure-point-for-the-eu\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">focal point<\/a> of what EU governments describe as Russia and Belarus&#8217; hybrid campaign against neighbouring states, with Belarus&#8217; President Aliaksandr Lukashenka using the state-sponsored exploitation of migrants to exert pressure on the EU&#8217;s eastern border.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;We&#8217;re being tested,&#8221; Prime Minister Kulbergs told Euronews&#8217; morning show,Europe Today. &#8220;At this moment, it is us. At any given moment it is our neighbours in Lithuania, Estonia, Finland or Poland.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;This is a hybrid threat. This is a war threat. That&#8217;s what Russia does,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Since 2021, Belarus&#8217; President Aliaksandr Lukashenka has been luring in migrants from the Middle East and Africa and busing them to the border with Poland and Baltic states.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Many countries have <a data-ylk=\"slk:fortified their border defences;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;link&quot;,&quot;yLinkElementType&quot;:&quot;article_link&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.euronews.com\/2026\/04\/04\/polands-border-with-belarus-sees-decrease-in-illegal-immigration-attempts-by-96\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">fortified their border defences<\/a>, including through building fences, in response.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">On Wednesday, Latvia&#8217;s armed forces said they had fired a warning shot and used tear gas against migrants attempting to cross from Belarus.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Asked why Russia and Belarus seemed to be singling out his country, Kulbergs responded: &#8220;Because he&#8217;s losing in Ukraine, simple. He needs to take attention somewhere else.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">He added that the asylum seekers attempting to cross were &#8220;men, 18 to 25, with a criminal past, all given visas from Belarus&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;This is an organised threat towards us to find a weak link,&#8221; he explained, &#8220;and we all have to take all the measures to prevent that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Latvia recorded as many as 111 attempted illegal crossings from Belarus in a single day last week. That compared to just two attempts to cross into Lithuania, which shares a border four times as long with Belarus, on the same day.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The trend is reportedly prompting neighbouring Lithuania to mull introducing border controls with Latvia in order to prevent secondary migration, a prospect firmly rejected by both countries&#8217; presidents. Secondary migration into Lithuania has spiked since Riga has been targeted with more migrant flows.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The increase also coincides with the start of the campaign ahead of Latvia&#8217;s October parliamentary elections, suggesting that the move is a coordinated attempt to destabilise the region&#8217;s democracy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Watch the full interview with Prime Minister Kulbergs in the video player above and across all Euronews platforms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Latvia&#8217;s Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs has told Euronews that Russia and Belarus are intensifying their hybrid war against&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1049,32,1771,89,1772,115,1770,55],"class_list":["post-3932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-aliaksandr-lukashenka","tag-belarus","tag-euronews","tag-lithuania","tag-minister-kulbergs","tag-president-vladimir-putin","tag-prime-minister-andris-kulbergs","tag-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3932","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=3932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}