Latvia, Lithuania and Poland are currently facing a major crisis of illegal immigrants, and Andris Sprūds, director of the Latvian Foreign Policy Institute, indicates on the morning of 18 August in the TV3 program “900 seconds” that Belarus can still “play” various surprises both economically and militarily.
The Belarussian regime is currently actively redirecting illegal migrants to the Baltic States, and a total of 395 people have been deterred from crossing the state border in Latvia since 10 August.
Read more – MEPs emphasize that border violations organized by the Belarussian regime are a hybrid war
Sprūds points out that a recurrence of events is unlikely, but economic and military “surprises” on the part of Belarus cannot be ruled out. Taking into account Latvia’s co-operation with Belarus in the use of ports, Sprūds points out that it cannot be ruled out that Belarus will announce the establishment of further co-operation with, for example, Russia.
Also currently a topical issue is the “Zapad 2021” military exercise, which will begin this autumn.
At present, the situation with Russia’s military presence in Belarus and whether it can be located on the Latvian-Belarusian border is not clear. Nor can it be ruled out that the Russian military might disrupt Latvia’s telecommunications network, as it is known that the Zapad 2021 exercise is more planned to be implemented e-militarily.
Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkēvičs has previously told The Financial Times that there is currently a risk of incidents between NATO, Russia and Belarus. The Commander of the National Armed Forces (NAF) Leonīds Kalniņš also concludes that Russia is examining the Latvian defense system through Belarus.
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Asked how serious such threats should be today, Sprud said they remain at the threat level: “I don’t think Lukashenko or Putin’s plan is to launch a large-scale incident, at least in military terms.”-
It has already been reported that on August 10, the government supported the declaration of a state of emergency on the Latvian-Belarusian border and gave the border guard the right to use physical force to immediately return persons to the country from which they crossed the border illegally.
Taking into account the number of cases of illegal crossing of the Latvian-Belarusian border and its rapid increase, as well as the large number of cases of illegal crossing of the Lithuanian-Belarusian border, an emergency situation has been declared in Ludza, Kraslava, Augšdaugava districts and Daugavpils until November 10.
The government also ruled that applications from individuals for refugee or alternative status would not be accepted at State Border Guard units and other institutions located in the area where the state of emergency was declared.
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