Latvia has become the latest focus of what EU governments describe as Belarusian President Aliaksandr Lukashenka’s campaign to use migration as a tool of political pressure against the bloc’s eastern frontier.
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After years in which Latvia, Lithuania and Poland shared the bulk of irregular crossings from Belarus, Latvian authorities say the pressure has now shifted towards their border. The increase comes just months before Latvia’s parliamentary elections on 3 October, raising concerns that Minsk is once again seeking to exploit migration to destabilise the region.
The scale of the shift is reflected in recent border data. On Thursday, Latvia, which has a 173-kilometre border with Belarus, recorded 111 attempted illegal crossings from the country in a single day. Lithuania, which shares a border four times longer at 679 kilometres, recorded two attempted crossings on the same day, while Poland reported none the previous day. Secondary migration to Lithuania through Latvia has also increased fourfold.
“Today Latvia’s border has become the main target,” Latvia’s Interior Minister Jānis Dombrava told Euronews.
Officials in Riga argue that the timing is not accidental.
“Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine, openly supported by the Belarusian regime, has significantly increased security risks in the region and provides additional motivation for Belarus to continue hybrid activities, including the instrumentalisation of migration,” a spokesperson for Latvia’s Interior Ministry said.
The ministry says Minsk has deliberately facilitated migration flows towards the EU’s external borders in order to stretch national resources and increase pressure on neighbouring countries.
The crisis first erupted in 2021 after Lukashenka threatened to flood neighbouring countries with migrants and drugs. Latvia, Lithuania and Poland subsequently built border barriers, expanded surveillance and increased patrols. Latvian officials now admit that those measures alone are not enough to cope with increased pressure.
“The State Border Guard is doing everything possible,” Dombrava said, “however, given the intensity of the migration pressure, the resources currently available are not always sufficient to intercept every group of illegal migrants in time.”
As pressure has intensified, Latvia has turned to neighbouring countries for support.
Lithuania weighs border controls
Lithuania has deployed nine border guards and two service dogs to Latvia to reinforce patrols along the Belarusian border. The team replaced nine Lithuanian officers who had been stationed there since 1 July.
Estonia sent two 12-member Border Guard teams to Latvia in June.
“The Latvian-Belarusian border is both the external border of NATO and the European Union, and thus also our border,” Veiko Kommusaar, head of Border Guard at Estonia’s Police and Border Guard Board, told Euronews.
The countries are working with the objective that “no illegal border crosser should be able to enter through [EU’s] external border,” Dombrava said.
But that is currently not the case.
Lithuanian border authorities say secondary migration from Latvia has also increased sharply, with the number of migrants attempting to continue westwards through Lithuania after entering the EU through Latvia rising more than fourfold compared with the first half of last year.
This rise has prompted debate in Lithuania over whether temporary controls should be introduced on its border with Latvia, following the example of Poland, which has been carrying out checks on travellers arriving from Lithuania and Germany for the past year.
The new Lithuanian Interior Minister Martynas Katelynas has not ruled out the measure, “if we had no other way to manage the flow and stop migrants at the border,” he told Lithuanian public broadcaster LRT earlier this week.
For now, though, the focus remains on strengthening the EU’s external frontier rather than restricting movement inside the bloc, Dombrava said in a press release, after the two countries signed an agreement to deepen cooperation between law enforcement agencies on Thursday.
“At the moment there is no question of restoring border control on the Latvian-Lithuanian border,” he said, “but rather the possibility of sending a significant number of border guards to each other to support the country that is currently experiencing the greatest pressure.
Migration as a geopolitical tool
The three Baltic countries’ officials argue that migrants are being used as instruments of a state-directed operation rather than acting independently.
“What is happening on the Latvian-Belarusian border is a deliberate operation organised with the support of Belarus, with the aim of undermining border security and the general sense of security,” Kommusaar said.
“Ordinary people are used as a means of pressure to achieve their goal.”
According to the Latvian interior ministry, many migrants arrive in Belarus legally before being transported towards the borders with Latvia, Lithuania or Poland and directed towards crossing points. Authorities allege that Belarusian security forces have escorted migrants to the frontier, provided equipment to breach border barriers and, in some cases, prevented people from returning deeper into Belarus.
The nationalities of migrants have changed over time, the Lithuanian State Border Guard Service spokesperson, Lina Laurinaitytė, told Euronews in a written comment. Earlier waves included citizens of Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, Yemen, Somalia, Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“This is not spontaneous migration,” Laurinaitytė said. “It is a state-organised operation designed to exert political pressure on the European Union.”
At the time of publication, Poland’s Interior Ministry has not responded to a request for comment.
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