Belarusian authorities behind irregular crossings, infrastructure damage, Latvia says

October 27, Pozirk. Latvia suspects Belarusian border control authorities of running a criminal ring that enables undocumented third-country foreigners to cross Latvia’s border and damage its infrastructure, according to a report broadcast by LTV.

In July, Latvia’s Prosecutor General’s Office opened a criminal case against a group that, Prosecutor Andris Aleksejevs said, seeks to commit “especially serious crimes” against the Latvian state.

According to Aleksejevs, traffickers charge migrants around $5,000, usually in cryptocurrency, for a chance to get into Latvia. Migrants enter Belarus through Russia and then travel to camps near the Latvian border to wait for a greenlight to cross the border. The waiting period may be between a few days and several months. 

Men wearing camouflage unform visit the camps on a regular basis, gather the migrants and check whether they have paid for an illegal border crossing, Aleksejevs said.

Those who have failed to pay are sent to the border to damage its infrastructure. If someone refuses to go there, they are abused and tortured until they finally comply, he said.

Migrants reportedly know exactly which facilities to target and how to damage them. Armed with various tools, including hacksaws, they damage infrastructure and return to Belarus within seconds.

Since the beginning of 2026, Latvian border guards have recorded more than 60 incidents of damage to border infrastructure, including power distribution cabinets and surveillance cameras. Twenty-three such incidents were reported in 2025.

This year Latvia has been the main target for irregular migrants seeking to enter the European Union via Belarus, accounting for 85 percent of the nearly 14,700 crossing attempts.

A major incident occurred at the Latvian border on October 6, when a group of masked gunmen attempted to push 20 migrants into the Latvian territory, shouting threats at Latvian border guards. Several hours later, masked individuals crossed the Latvian border from Belarus, damaged a relay cabinet and stole surveillance cameras before retreating to the Belarusian territory.

Latvia’s Interior Minister Jānis Dombrava condemned the incident as a “demonstrative and aggressive provocation.”

Alaksandar Łukašenka dismissed Riga’s accusations and claimed that “this was all done by the Latvians themselves as a pretext to get money from the European Union.”

The flow of people eager to cross into the EU surged in spring 2021 after Łukašenka, angered by EU sanctions, had indicated that Minsk would not prevent asylum seekers from Africa and Asia from using Belarus as a route to the EU.

In June 2021, the Belarusian government suspended a readmission agreement with the EU in response to sanctions that followed the forced landing of a Ryanair flight in Minsk.

Latvia, Lithuania and Poland call the migration crisis a “hybrid attack” orchestrated by Minsk and Moscow.

Politics Security

Politics, Security

Łukašenka shifts blame for armed border standoff to Latvia

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