Lithuania could reclose the border with Belarus indefinitely if security threats continue, Lithuanian Prime minister Inga Ruginiene said on Friday.
“Today we see that we can reopen the borders, but we are not ruling out the possibility of closing them again for an unlimited time if the situation deteriorates,” the minister told reporters.
Commenting on contraband-carrying balloons that are often launched from Belarusian smugglers and led to the closure of airports and border crossings, Ruginiene said this problem has become “our new reality” but that authorities have adjusted response procedures.
“We can say that we are closing airports less often, and we are preparing for every new threat,” she said. Stressing that border closure alone will not stop the balloon launches, the minister said the government was taking broader measures fighting smugglers responsible for balloon launches.
“We have carried out a significant number of searches and made arrests, which shows that over the past year we have intensified our fight against smuggling. We see this in the number of balloons crossing our border. We are also working actively through diplomatic channels,” Ruginiene said.
Commenting on the decision to close the Belarus border for a month in October, in response to alleged targeted attempts to direct contraband balloons towards Vilnius Airport, Ruginiene said this was an “extreme measure”.
The Medininkai and Šalčininkai border checkpoints reopened at midnight Thursday. Ruginiene described Belarus’ blockade preventing Lithuanian trucks returning, the minister described this as Minsk’s “hybrid war”.
“Lukashenko has already shown through his actions that we were right when we spoke about a hybrid attack. The fact that trucks still cannot return shows we were right and that we were fighting against a hybrid attack,” the minister said.
In turn, the Belarusian Foreign Ministry has accused Vilnius of closing the border with Belarus, describing it as illegal. “The decision to close the border was taken unilaterally by the Lithuanian side, was purely political in nature and was made outside the procedures and deadlines provided for in existing international treaties. For example, in accordance with the bilateral agreement on border crossing points, an official notification of such actions must be sent in advance: from one to five days, depending on the situation,” the Belarusian Foreign Ministry’s spokesman Ruslan Varankov Varanov said on Thursday.
