VILNIUS, August 6. /TASS/. The Lithuanian side has registered the increased activity of Belarusian border guards, head of Lithuania’s Border Guard Service General Rustamas Liubajevas reported on Friday.
"The number of the Belarusian border guards has noticeably increased, they are concentrated in the area near the border, of course, not along its entire length (about 680 kilometers — TASS) but along those segments where violations occur most often," he said.
Since August 3, the Lithuanian side started to take strict measures to stop the influx of migrants after the country’s Interior Ministry granted them the authority to do so. This week, the border guards stopped about 700 migrants crossing into Lithuania from Belarus who were turned around at the border and returned to Belarus.
"According to our estimates, these people remain in the Belarusian border zone. Some of them, possibly, will try to cross the Lithuanian border illegally again, and some will seek other routes," the general noted.
Since the beginning of the year, some 4,112 illegal migrants have been detained on the Lithuanian-Belarusian border which is 50 times more than during the entire year in 2020. At the end of May, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko stated that his country served as a barrier on the path of human trafficking to the neighboring country, however, considering the West’s political pressure, Minsk may think twice about continuing to block the flow.