![\"Belarusian](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/01KZNBRZ3C4N22T6817QXF676X-image.webp\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\u00a9
\n EPA\/ALEXANDER NEMENOV \/ POOL
\n \u00a0
\n |
\n \u00a0 Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko (C-L) and Russian President Vladimir Putin arrive for the Victory Day military parade on the Red square in Moscow, Russia, 09 May 2026. <\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s most loyal ally, Belarus, is taking part in hybrid operations against the Baltic states, pushing migrants towards their borders, recruiting spies, and promoting propaganda narratives. Will Alexander Lukashenko be willing to drag his country in a Russian military operation in the region?<\/p>\n
Illegal migration as a weapon<\/p>\n
On July 31, Latvia closed the border with Belarus. Officially the reason is a technical issue on the border point, but the words of Latvian Interior Minister J\u0101nis Dombrava<\/a> a day earlier explain the situation much better: \u201cIf anyone is planning to travel to Belarus, or is currently there, we urge them to leave the country as soon as possible. Under the conditions of hybrid warfare, we cannot predict how the situation will develop. Therefore, everyone should heed the warnings issued by state authorities and refrain from traveling to Belarus\u201d. According to him, the migration flow orchestrated by the Lukashenko regime is an element of hybrid warfare, and countering it requires continued strengthening of the State Border Guard’s capabilities, as the migration pressure places a significant burden on Latvia’s internal security institutions.<\/p>\n If previously Poland and Lithuania were the main targets of the hybrid aggression with the use of illegal migration and smuggling, now these efforts of Minsk and Moscow are directed towards Riga. This situation marked another stage of escalation against the Western neighbours of Belarus. Lukashenko\u2019s foreign ministry replied to the actions of Riga rather in the Russian propaganda style than in diplomatic words: \u201cWe view what has happened as yet another violation of the very \u201cEuropean values\u201d that the Baltic states are so fond of invoking. Once again, the freedom of movement of citizens has been cruelly sacrificed to short-term domestic political considerations. Moreover, even if technical failures in the systems really did occur, it is doubtful that this level of technological reliability is what Latvia expected when it joined the European Union. In response to this unfriendly step, the Belarusian side reserves the right to take retaliatory measures against Latvia, including asymmetric ones, in order to protect the national interests of Belarus and its citizens\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201eCollaborate or be arrested\u201d<\/p>\n Migrants are not the only tool used by Minsk against the Baltic States. The Belarusian intelligence has been trying to recruit citizens of the Baltic countries at least since 2021. Tourists travelling to Belarus have been targeted, sometimes successfully. In April 2026, a Lithuanian court in Klaip\u0117da sentenced<\/a> Mindaugas Januitis and Tatjana Beleckaja to 7 and 6.5 years in prison respectively, after finding that they had been recruited by the \u201eMain intelligence directorate of the General Staff of Belarus\u201d in Minsk in 2022 to collect military information on Lithuania and Latvia, including NATO-related activities. On the other hand, there are several Lithuanian and Latvian citizens in Belarusian prisons, who were arrested during visiting the country and then accused of spying for the special services of their countries.<\/p>\n There are also attempts to recruit people in Lithuania to carry out provocations. For example, on March 26, 2026 a 14-years old boy, who made provocative graffiti in Belarusian language, was detained<\/a> in Vilnius. Reportedly, he agreed to carry out this task because of being threatened via social networks. There are more such cases reported by Lithuanian special services.<\/p>\n The foreign legion of Lukashenko\u2019s propaganda<\/p>\n On June 14, Lithuanian MP and former prime-minister Saulius Skvernelis, who is under investigation on corruption allegations, said he had been targeted by a provocation after being invited to Belarus: \u201cI was invited to come to Belarus\u2014seriously. I received two emails from a Belarusian citizen, a journalist. This was before any proceedings here, before I was officially named as a suspect. The emails said that, according to their information, I was under suspicion and that political persecution would soon begin. Therefore, I was invited to Belarus, where all the necessary conditions would be created for me. They would provide opportunities, resources, and financial support for me and my family\u201d.<\/p>\n Belarus has been using Western bloggers and politicians, many of them from the Baltic states, to set up an informal \u201cforeign legion\u201d spreading propaganda, and offered safe haven.\u00a0<\/p>\n In early May 2026, Lithuanian blogger Antanas Kandrotas, also known in Lithuania by his nickname Celofanas and notorious for a string of scandals, left for Belarus. Previously, he was sentenced to one year in prison for inciting hatred, but managed to leave the country before the verdict entered into force. More recently, he was sentenced to three and a half years’ imprisonment in a separate case involving illegal fuel trading, tax evasion, and financial crimes.<\/p>\n In Belarus, Kandrotas promoted Lukashenko regime propaganda, praising the dictator personally as well as his governing system; the blogger also repeated the basic Kremlin narratives about the Baltics, e.g. Lithuania is not a sovereign state,0 and is ruled by Washington or Brussels. Kandrotas also claimed that Vilnius has an aggressive Russia policy<\/a>: \u201c…little by little we are shifting onto a wartime footing. There is a clear direction. Lithuania is gradually turning into one huge military town and a testing ground, supposedly all for its own defense. But no one explains why offensive weapons are being purchased. And if you ask uncomfortable questions, pro-government activists immediately attack you, and in some cases even the prosecutor\u2019s office gets involved. You end up being labeled a Kremlin agent\u201d.<\/p>\n In his propaganda efforts Kandrotas joined another Lithuanian resident in Minsk \u2013 Edikas Jagelavi\u010dius, who is an associate of Algirdas Paleckis, a man that is serving a prison sentence for spying on behalf of Russia. Jagelavi\u010dius relocated to Belarus back in 2022. Lithuania’s State Security Department (SSD) noted in its national threat assessment published this year that he has not returned to Lithuania because he risks criminal prosecution for traveling to the Russian-occupied territories of Donbas and for forging documents during the establishment of the International Forum of Good Neighbourhood. Following the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Forum organised trips to Belarus and Russia and actively repeated Moscow\u2019s propaganda narratives.<\/p>\n Also in spring 2026, a Latvian citizen and former member of both the Latvian Parliament and the Riga City Council, Aleksejs Ros\u013cikovs, relocated to Belarus. Unsurprisingly, he is also a subject of criminal proceedings in Latvia. In 2025, during a debate in the Parliament on a declaration concerning the Soviet-era policy of Russification and measures to address its linguistic legacy, Ros\u013cikovs caused a major scandal. After heavily criticising the document he openly declared in Russian that \u201cRussian is our language; we are the majority\u201d, accompanying this with an obscene gesture. In Belarus he is promoting Lukashenko regime propaganda and even was granted citizenship almost immediately after coming to Minsk. The narratives he promotes can be summed up by the following statement<\/a> made in April 2026: \u201cI urge everyone to fully recognize the strategic importance and strength of the Republic of Belarus for Latvia and the Baltic region, and to begin engaging in dialogue and cooperation. The Republic of Belarus is a potentially strong, important, and strategic partner for us\u201d.<\/p>\n On the one hand, it is obvious that such persons are used for propaganda reasons. Belarus is presented by them as a \u201cshowroom of Russia\u201d \u2013 the puppet state, where national culture is being oppressed and banned against the background of total Russification. This image is appealing for the Russian-speaking audience of Kremlin propaganda in the Baltic states, especially Latvia, where this part of the population refuses to integrate in the society and openly supports Moscow\u2019s aggressive policy. At the same time, they support the narratives about \u201cRussophobia\u201d and the crisis in Europe for the Russian audience.<\/p>\n On the other hand, this can be a part of traditional Kremlin tactics to look for allies in the enemy states, which Moscow is about to attack. In this case they will help to present the aggression as an aid to \u201cfriendly people of insert_any_country_name_here\u201d: the legitimate representatives of the nation asked for Russia\u2019s help to restore the law and order. So, trying to gather a group of supporters with political background from Lithuania, for instance, can be a sign of Moscow’s plans for further escalation against Europe and targeting the Baltics.<\/p>\n The dark scenario<\/p>\n In April 2026, the Vilnius-based think-tank Baltic Defence Initiative published a report<\/a> called \u201cOperation Winter Storm\u201d presenting one of the possible scenarios of a Russian attack against the Baltic states, which leads to their occupation. According to this scenario, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are left without any protection from NATO allies because of the nature of the attacks, lack of unity within the Alliance and the inability of European states to defend successfully in the framework of drone warfare.<\/p>\n The brief reads the following: \u201cDecember 2027. Marine Le Pen withdraws France’s nuclear umbrella from all NATO allies. The US is 18 months drained into the Iran war with empty stocks. At 11 AM, Russia launches a devastating attack on the on Lithuanian’s government with hypersonic missiles – followed by the launch of +170,000 Shahed drones over the next 60 days that completely flatten Vilnius, \u2014 destroying every bridge, every power plant, every hospital, every water treatment facility in the country. 2.8 million people in the dark at -10C with no heat, no water, no communications, and no government. No Russian soldier ever crossed the border. On Day 90, Moscow issues an ultimatum: all three Baltic states accept Russian occupation \u2014 or Riga and Tallinn are next\u201d.<\/p>\n In this scenario, Belarus is viewed as a launching ground for Russian drones and missiles as well as a logistics base for troops. It is necessary to underline that the Lukashenko regime is already known for assisting the Kremlin in drone attacks on Ukraine \u2013 according to information of Belarusian independent media and Ukrainian experts, Kyiv even had to destroy several transmitters<\/p>\n
The Latvian Ministry of Interior reports that since the beginning of 2026, the Border Guard has already prevented almost 9,000 attempts to cross Belarusian-Latvian border illegally, while the total number since 2020 approaches 50,000. In order to cope with the threat, Estonian border guards were sent to help their Latvian colleagues.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/uvpFLao9FUi9VP6HlPkF0lcvWP5KqbljgjP79dLy.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a9 EPA\/ALEXANDER NEMENOV \/ POOL \u00a0 | \u00a0 Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko (C-L) and Russian President Vladimir Putin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4993,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2043,213,87,1768,2042,2041,1752,144,2044,55],"class_list":["post-4992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-aleksandr-lukasenko","tag-baltic-states","tag-estonia","tag-hybrid-warfare","tag-letonia","tag-lituania","tag-migrants","tag-nato","tag-propaganda","tag-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4992","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=4992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/belarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}