Lithuania lifts border emergency state as migrant flow stops


According to Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė, the flow of migrants, arriving in Belarus and then going back to Lithuania, has stopped, reports Delfi.lt.

Ingrida Šimonytė.
Photo: Delfi.lt.

“According to our data, the flow has stopped. The regime is not able to organize it,” Ingrida Šimonytė told reporters on Friday, January 14.

On January 15, the state of emergency on the border of Lithuania and Belarus ended, control of the border will go back to normal.

“For the time being, we will control it the way we did before the declaration of the state of emergency,” said the prime minister. – <…>. If the situation changes, if we see that Lithuania seems to have reduced its vigilance and is less intent on protecting the EU borders, we will ask the Seimas to introduce a new state of emergency – it is possible”.

According to Ingrida Šimonytė, 1.5-2 thousand migrants are now in Belarus, and they will try to cross the border of Belarus with Lithuania, Latvia, or Poland in the future.

The Lithuanian Seimas declared a state of emergency on the border with Belarus and in the places of settlement of migrants in Kibartai, Medininkai, Pabrada, Rukla, and Vilnius, in November 2021.

More than 4.2 thousand migrants entered Lithuania illegally last year. Lithuania and other Western countries have accused Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s regime of organizing the migration flows and have called it hybrid aggression.

belsat.eu

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