Latvia reports sharp rise in illegal border crossing attempts

July 9, Pozirk. In the first week of July, illegal border crossings via Belarus into Poland plunged to 183, a sharp decrease compared to the same period last month, while crossings into Latvia rose three-fold to 386, Pozirk‘s analysis of border guards’ data showed.

Lithuanian border guards have not allowed 12 migrants to enter illegally from Belarus over the past week.

Pressure on the Polish border has eased after Polish President Andrzej Duda and Chinese President Xi Jinping held talks in Beijing on June 24. Duda informed his counterpart about the challenges posed by the migration crisis to Chinese goods transit to the EU.

In mid-June, Warsaw also enacted a 90-day border area entry ban at the shared border with Belarus that helped cut illegal crossing attempts.

Since the start of 2024, the EU has thwarted at least 23,518 attempts to violate its border from Belarus, 15 percent more than in the same period last year. Poland was the primary target with 20,414 attempts, while Latvia and Lithuania reported 4,593 and 1,267 attempts, respectively.

The migration crisis at the Belarus-EU border started in spring 2021 after Alaksandar Łukašenka, angered by EU sanctions, had indicated that Minsk would not prevent migrants from Africa and Asia from using Belarus as a route to the EU.

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

Tensions on the border escalated this spring with the spike in illegal border crossings and attacks on Polish border guards by people trying to cross the border illegally. One of them resulted in the death of Polish soldier Mateusz Sitek, stabbed at the border with Belarus.

Belarus’ western neighbors call the migration crisis a “hybrid attack” orchestrated by Minsk and Moscow.