The Latvian authorities have recorded an increase in the number of refugees apprehended on the Belarusian border in the past few days. Interior Minister Marija Golubeva wants the government to declare an emergency situation at the border. According to the Baltic news agency BNS, Latvian officials have arrested 214 illegally entered refugees since last Friday, 86 of them on Monday night. Before that, Latvia had only registered 55 refugees since the beginning of the year.
In Lithuania, on the other hand, which had recorded over 4,000 refugees arriving via Belarus since the beginning of the year, no new arrivals were registered for three days. The Lithuanian border guard began last week to push refugees from the Belarus area back into the neighboring country away from the official border crossings.
Lithuania and the EU are accusing Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of deliberately allowing the refugees to cross the EU border. In response to the Lithuanian measure to push back migrants, Belarus for its part closed its borders and has recently requested from Lithuanian trucks that they can be located on Belarusian territory at any time using GPS monitoring technology. The interior ministers of the EU will meet for a video conference on August 18 because of the problem at the Belarusian border.
