VILNIUS (AP) – Lithuania on Wednesday decided to temporarily close two of its six checkpoints with Belarus later this week amid growing tensions with its eastern neighbour.
The Lithuanian government has said that the crossings at Tverecius and Sumskas will be closed, and traffic will be diverted to the Medininkai border checkpoint, which is the largest of Lithuania’s six checkpoints.
The decision came as Lithuanians grow increasingly worried about the presence of Wagner group mercenaries in Belarus.
“The main goal is to temporarily suspend operations at these two points from August 18,” Deputy Minister of Transport Agnė Vaiciukeviciūte said.
Lithuanian State Border Guard Service Commander Rustamas Liubajevas said that there could be up to 4,500 of Wagner fighters in Belarus, with some of them stationed close to the Lithuanian and Polish borders.
In neighbouring Latvia, the State Border Guard Service said on Tuesday it was mobilising additional border guards to strengthen the protection of the external state border, the LETA news agency said.
This decision was taken due to the sharp increase in the hybrid threat at the Latvian-Belarusian border over the past days, when 96 attempts by people to cross the state border were detected, as well as the increased involvement of the Belarusian authorities in organising the flow of illegal immigrants.
LETA said that the annual leave of State Border Guard officers had been suspended.
The State Border Guard has also requested additional support from the National Armed Forces and the State Police.
Lithuania, too, has seen migrants coming from Belarus. A total of 11,211 people have been denied entry to Lithuania from Belarus since January 2022, according to the State Border Service. And some 1,543 have not been allowed to enter this year so far.
Countries bordering Belarus have increased border security since thousands of Wagner fighters arrived in Belarus under a deal that ended their armed rebellion in late June and allowed them and their leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, to avoid criminal charges.
In recent days, Poland, which sits south of Lithuania, has been deploying thousands of troops to its border with Belarus, calling it a deterrent move as tensions between the two neighbours ratchet up.
