VILNIUS, August 3. /TASS/. Vilnius has evidence that Belarusian border control officers are involved in the transfer of migrants from Asia and Africa to Lithuania, Deputy Foreign Minister Mantas Adomenas told the EKho Moskvy radio on Tuesday.
"There are many of these pieces of evidence. The last one of them is the video recorded by Frontex agents where we can see a Belarusian border control car escorting a group of migrants all the way to the border. They reversed only when they realized they were being filmed," he said.
According to Adomenas, the first symptoms of the future crisis emerged after Minsk stopped cooperating with Vilnius on migration issues in March. "Illegal migrants who travelled to Lithuania from Belarus were then taken back with relevant documentation. We later started getting evidence that Belarusian officials are directly involved in it," the deputy minister stressed.
Lithuanian media reported about the video shot from a Frontex helicopter on Tuesday. However, even these articles only suggest that the vehicle might belong to the Belarusian border control agency.
"Minsk is directing a flow of illegal migration organized by the [Belarusian President Alexander] Lukashenko regime, hoping that Lithuania will review its course in support of sanctions against Minsk," Adomenas underlined.
Since the beginning of the year, 4,026 illegal migrants have been detained on the Lithuanian-Belarusian border, which is almost 50 times higher than in the whole of 2020. In late May, Lukashenko said that his country used to serve as a barrier on the way of migrant trafficking but Minsk might rethink its policy in this regard in light of the political pressure applied by the West.