On Friday, July 9, Prime Minister of Lithuania Ingrid Shimonite announced the start of construction of a barbed wire wall on the border with Belarus. The fence will be erected to avoid the influx of illegal migrants, who have already counted more than 1.4 thousand since the beginning of the year.
The Prime minister also said that the army will also participate in the construction of the “fence”. It is also used to strengthen the patrol at the border.
Back in June of this year, the Lithuanian authorities began discussing the construction of a wall along the border with Belarus. Then Ingrid Shimonite didn’t appreciate this idea and said that “modern technologies” will soon appear in the country.
On July 2, Lithuania declared a state of emergency. Illegal migrants from the Congo, Iran, Iraq, Guinea and many other countries came from Belarus in a wave. According to the head of the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry, Gabrielius Landsbergis, migrants fly to Minsk on direct flights from Istanbul, and then try to cross the border illegally with forged documents or without them at all.
The wall being built on the border will be a two-layer protection from unwanted tourists with a length of 678.8 kilometers. The first layer — barbed wire-has already been erected on a site of 78 kilometers. The second layer is planned to build a high stone wall. According to LRT, 39% of the length of the border is under video surveillance.
“We protect not only the Lithuanian border, but also the external borders of the EU,” — Shimonite is quoted as saying by the Associated Press.
She also accused Belarus of a “hybrid attack”. The President of the European Council, Charles Michel, promised to help Vilnius in this matter. Following the example of Lithuania, Latvia and Poland also decided to strengthen the protection of the border with Belarus.
