The Foreign Ministers of the European Union expressed solidarity with Lithuania, Latvia and Poland and announced their readiness to take all measures to support them if the situation continues to deteriorate.
According to TASS, the heads of the foreign affairs agencies of the EU countries believe that Belarus creates artificial migration pressure on the eastern border of the community in Lithuania and Poland. This was stated on Friday by the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell at a press conference following an informal meeting of foreign ministers held in the capital of Slovenia, which until the end of the year is the President of the EU Council.
“Belarus uses migrants and refugees to create artificial pressure on the eastern border of the European Union, since the borders of Lithuania and Poland are the borders of the EU”, he said. “The ministers expressed solidarity with Lithuania, Latvia and Poland and announced their readiness to take all measures to support them if the situation continues to deteriorate.”
Since the beginning of the year, more than 4 thousand illegal migrants have been detained at the Lithuanian-Belarusian border. This is 50 times more than in the entire 2020. Vilnius believes that the migration crisis was provoked by Minsk, and they call it a hybrid attack on Lithuania. At the end of May, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko said that his country served as a barrier to the transfer of illegal migrants to Europe, however, given the political pressure from the West, Minsk may wonder whether to continue doing this. In connection with the aggravation of the migration situation on the border with Poland at the end of August, Warsaw has already declared a state of emergency in the border zone.