So far, only Lithuania is suffering
Belarus is moving further away from Europe. Speaking at a ceremony dedicated to the Day of National Remembrance of the Victims of the war in the Brest Fortress, President Alexander Lukashenko threatened neighboring countries that he would stop slowing down illegal migrants. Lithuania has already started talking about the influx of Iraqis into the country and is asking the Iraqi Foreign Ministry to facilitate the return of its citizens.
Photo: president.gov.by.
A ceremony dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War was held in the Brest Fortress. In his speech, Lukashenka announced the termination of cooperation with the EU on migration, drug trafficking, as well as the traffic of nuclear materials. According to him, thousands and thousands of illegal migrants who enter these countries through Belarus have already rushed to Lithuania, Latvia and Poland. Moreover, drug smuggling and drug traffic enter the EU in the same way. “You have unleashed a hybrid war against us and demand that we protect you, as before?”quot; — said Lukashenko.
These are not the first such statements by the Belarusian president after the forced landing of the Ryanair plane, which Western countries regarded as state terrorism. And it seems that Minsk does not stop at threats.
Migrants arrive in Belarus by plane. Now Minsk supports direct flights to Baghdad and Istanbul. Moreover, since May, the number of flights from Iraq has been increased. The Boeing 737-800 aircraft of the Baghdad carrier arrives at the Belarusian airport on Mondays and Thursdays. It is designed for 189 seats. And byon Mondays and Fridays, flights are operated by Iraqi Airways on a Boeing 747-400 with seats from 320 to 526 people, depending on the configuration of the vessel.Citizens of Pakistan and Afghanistan can also transit from Turkey to Belarus. And after landing in Minsk, they go further to Europe.
On June 2, Lithuanian Interior Minister Agne Bilotaite said that the number of illegal migrants from Belarus has sharply increased in the country. According to her, since the beginning of the year, 189 illegal migrants have entered the country, which is twice as much as last year. And already on June 17, the situation became even worse – for two weeks, the state border withanother 204 migrants, most of them citizens of Iraq, crossed the Belarusian side. The head of the National Security and Defense Committee of the Lithuanian Seimas, Laurinas Kaschiunas, stated that this is a targeted blow to Lithuania, since there is zero in the column on illegal migration in Latvia, and much fewer migrants are asking for Poland than for Lithuania.
According to Belarusian political analyst Valery Karbalevich, Lithuania may suffer more than other Baltic countries in this situation, since the state borders were equipped here in a hurry. “For example, the Polish border is the former border with the USSR. Everything is more seriously arranged there and it is more difficult to cross it. In Lithuania, the border could be created in a hurry. Also, a political factor may play here as revenge on Lithuania for their unambiguous position on the incident with the Ryanair plane, the expert suggested.
However, the Lithuanian Interior Ministry says that the situation on the border is controlled. To solve the problem, they intend to involve the military and strengthen the tracking system at the state border. “Compared to what the EU experienced a few years ago, when thousands of migrants made their way across the sea, what is happening now is no threat at all. The land border, unlike the sea border, is easier to control, there is wire and other attributes everywhere. Therefore, the problem here is rather psychological. Such a minor inconvenience for Lithuania, ” Karbalevich is sure.
As for drug trafficking, from January to October last year, more than half a ton of drugs were detected on the Belarusian border with the EU countries, mainly hashish, marijuana and ecstasy. However, traffic is controlled by both sides, and if Belarus refuses to fulfill its obligations, the load on neighboring countries will increase.
According to the former presidential candidate of Belarus Andrey Dmitriev, such statements of Lukashenka are very dangerous not so much for the EU countries, but for Minsk itself: “The West has heard that the Belarusian authorities do not control the borders, and given that NATO is becoming the main coordinator of European policy in the West, this isthis will lead to an increase in NATO spending on the eastern territory. Secondly, it will also become an argument of Poland in a conversation with the United States, which has been trying for more than one year to achieve the deployment of a US military base on its territory. Thirdly, the EU will ask for much larger sums to strengthen the border, ” Dmitriev said.
He is sure that as a result, Russia may also be involved in this story. Because if Minsk cannot control the situation, the Kremlin will be asked to do it. “I think this is very dangerous. We must show that we control the borders and are a reliable partner, fulfilling our obligations regardless of political differences, ” he concluded.