News|NATOLithuania extends Belarus border closure over balloon attackEntry to Lithuania still allowed for certain travellers, including EU citizens and humanitarian visa-holders.
Lithuania is tightening its border with Belarus for a month after waves of balloons carrying contraband cigarettes entered its airspace.
Lithuania is tightening its border with Belarus for a month after waves of balloons carrying contraband cigarettes entered its airspace.
Lithuania’s cabinet decided Wednesday to continue halting traffic at the Salcininkai crossing in the southeast until the end of November, while heavily restricting passage at its only other crossing, Medininkai, near the capital Vilnius, according to the BNS news agency.
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Diplomats, Lithuanian citizens, nationals of the European Union and NATO member states and their family members, as well as foreigners with valid Lithuanian permits, will still be allowed to enter Lithuania through Medininkai, BNS reported. The exemption also applies to holders of humanitarian visas.
Passenger trains between Belarus and Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave wedged between Poland and Lithuania, will not be affected. Russians holding a transit document allowing travel to Kaliningrad can also still cross at Medininkai, according to Lithuanian officials.
Prime Minister Inga Ruginiene said the restrictions could be extended. “We cannot fail to respond to a hybrid attack against Lithuania,” she told reporters.
Lithuania is tightening its border with Belarus for a month after waves of balloons carrying contraband cigarettes entered its airspace.
The measure will primarily affect thousands of Belarusian workers who regularly travel between the two countries, but Lithuanian businesses that continue to work with Minsk will also be impacted, Ruginiene said.
Belarus condemned Lithuania’s initial border closure after last week’s balloon incident and called on its neighbour to first look for accomplices within its own borders.
“Lithuanian politicians have decided to exploit the situation and place all the blame on Belarus, thus covering up their own inability (or unwillingness?) to find the smugglers’ contractors” inside Lithuania, said a statement by the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“If air balloons loaded with cigarettes are flying there, I guess they need to solve the issue on their end,” added Belarus’s President Alexander Lukashenko, noting that his country would apologise if its involvement is established.
Lithuania, a NATO and EU member on the Western alliance’s eastern flank, views the balloon disruption as a deliberate act of sabotage by Russia-allied Belarus.
Its concern is heightened by repeated drone intrusions into NATO’s airspace , which reached an unprecedented scale last month. Some European officials described the incidents as Moscow testing NATO’s response, which raised questions about how prepared the alliance is against Russia.
In Belgium, Defence Minister Theo Francken said an investigation was under way after “multiple drones were spotted again” overnight Tuesday into Wednesday above a military base in Marche-en-Famenne in the east of the country.
Based on reporting by Al Jazeera.