Lithuania’s FM summons Belarusian diplomat over repeated violations of state border
On Wednesday, the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned a representative of the Embassy of Belarus in Lithuania and handed in a diplomatic note, expressing a strong protest against repeated violations of the Lithuanian state border.
On October 18, a Belarusian border guard violated the Lithuanian state border at Varėna Frontier District (entered into the territory of Lithuania, reaching the state border marker No. 0133 near Druskininkai), the press service reports.
Lithuania’s Foreign Ministry demanded Belarus provide an explanation of the incident as soon as possible and to take all necessary measures to prevent such incidents from recurring.
The Lithuanian side also condemned the orchestration by Belarusian authorities of the flows of illegal migrants from Belarus, the ongoing repression against the civil society, as well as called for the release of all political prisoners and unlawfully detained people.
On October 18, EU Ministers of Foreign Affairs met in Luxembourg; among others, the participants touched upon the Belarusian issue. During Monday’s Foreign Affairs Council, Lithuanian FM Gabrielius Landsbergis said that the migration flows were not diminishing.
“We are trying to find the ways how to stop them and today’s question for my colleagues here at around the table. What tools do countries like Lithuania, Latvia, Poland need to use or can use in order to stop the weaponized migration that is being forced on the European Union? Because currently we are very much lacking the instruments and I think that we’re a little bit dragging our feet in order to fight this this new phenomenon of hybrid weaponized migration. Too bad that Lukashenka and his regime are not stepping down with the efforts to bring more people to European border. They are employing new flights from number of countries in the Middle East and Northern Africa in order to bring people, deceive people with the hopes of easy entry to the European Union to capital of Minsk and then to Lithuanian, Latin and Polish border,” he said.
The ministers also discussed would-be introducing the fifth sanctions package against the Lukashenka regime for their fostering illegal migration to the European Union through Belarus.
belsat.eu, following urm.lt
